Sony Acquires AAA Multiplayer Developer Firewalk Studios [IGN]

PlayStation announced that it has acquired Firewalk Studios, and that the studio still hard at work on its first original AAA multiplayer game. This comes after PlayStation and Firewalk Studios announced back in 2021 that they had formed a partnership to publish the aforementioned multiplayer game.

“Building a new studio at scale has been an incredibly exhilarating and relentlessly daunting task. Fortunately, we’ve been supported by great partners throughout,” explained studio head Tony Hsu and game director Ryan Ellis. “ProbablyMonsters helped turbocharge us in setting up the studio, and Sony has been supporting our project and our creative vision from the beginning.”

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) April 20, 2023

They continued: “Today we’re taking the next natural step and joining PlayStation Studios. We’ve worked closely with Hermen and the very talented team at PlayStation for years, helping to make our new game even better. To join PlayStation Studios is to formally become part of a family that has produced many of the most storied games of our age, and we are honored.”

Firewalk Studios was founded in 2018 as part of ProbablyMonsters, which was itself founded by former Bungie CEO Harold Ryan. It’s the latest studio to join the PlayStation portfolio. In particular, Firewalk Studios is another studio that is focusing on developing a multiplayer game, which is a direction that PlayStation is more frequently headed. PlayStation recently acquired Haven Studios, which is also creating its own multiplayer IP, as well as Bungie, who is working on a character-focused multiplayer game as well as it’s ongoing work on Destiny 2.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.

When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey