Former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden isn’t holding back when it comes to live-service gaming. In a recent interview with The Ringer, Layden said he doesn’t even consider live-service titles to be “real games,” describing them instead as “repetitive action engagement devices.”
When asked what defines a real game, Layden explained that three core elements are essential: story, character, and world. He pointed to Horizon, God of War, and Uncharted as perfect examples of games that embody all three. By contrast, he said live-service games focus less on narrative and more on looped gameplay that keeps players coming back.
“If you’re doing a live-service game,” Layden said, “you just need a repetitive action that most people can get their head around, an ability to communicate with like-minded people, and the desire to do it again and again and again.”
Layden left Sony back in 2019, never publicly explaining why — though in this new interview, he admitted the live-service shift “was not my skillset.” Around that time, Sony was heavily investing in the genre, announcing plans for a dozen live-service games by 2026. That target has since been scaled back, with several projects underperforming or being canceled outright.
Titles like Concord crashed and burned shortly after release, while others such as Helldivers 2 became breakout hits. Analyst Joost van Dreunen told The Ringer that Sony’s misfires “sting, but they’re not fatal,” noting that the PS5 business remains strong overall. “The real risk isn’t collapse,” he said, “it’s wasted time and money that could’ve gone into what Sony already does best.”
Sony has poured more than $1.45 billion into Epic Games, the studio behind Fortnite, so it still has major stakes in the live-service ecosystem. Its next big push is Bungie’s Marathon — a title that’s already faced multiple setbacks, including indefinite delays and even an art theft controversy.
Layden, however, warned companies not to chase the live-service model expecting quick, endless profits.
“If you’re trying to go into that space because you have this illusion of big sacks of money coming in every day for the rest of your life — for most, it doesn’t happen,” he said.
Layden’s comments come amid major internal shakeups at PlayStation. In 2023, long-time executive Connie Booth — who had been with the company for over 30 years — was reportedly fired, according to God of War co-creator David Jaffe. Jaffe claimed Booth took the blame for an internal push from former PlayStation boss Jim Ryan to ramp up live-service development, a move that frustrated several studios.
Among the casualties of that strategy was Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Online, which studio head Neil Druckmann once described as the team’s most ambitious project ever before it was canceled. A live-service God of War was also rumored to have been in early development before being scrapped.
Sony still insists it’s committed to the live-service model, despite a string of public setbacks and studio departures — including the recent silence around its upcoming project Fairgame$, whose lead developers have since left the company.
For Layden, though, the message is clear: the industry’s obsession with “forever games” may be pulling focus away from what truly makes games worth playing — storytelling, characters, and worlds players can lose themselves in.
