A fairly tame exchange between reliable Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier and a reader has resulted in a bunch of bad actors on social media saying Sony is “upset” with Naughty Dog.
It all somehow started on Blue Sky a few days ago, when Schreier shared his exclusive report on Bungie.
For those who missed it, the Washington studio is wrapping up support on Destiny 2, and doesn’t have a new project in the pipeline. Layoffs are expected at the Sony subsidiary, while it continues to support Marathon and plan out what’s next.
Many pondered why the team hadn’t immediately started working on Destiny 3, especially after the completion of 2024’s The Final Shape, which ostensibly concluded the looter shooter’s storyline.
“The answer, as it usually is, is how much money it would take,” Schreier wrote on Blue Sky.
A reader replied: “A company that has no issue letting Naughty Dog spend 5+ years and $300 million on a single player title is now concerned about spending money on a new MMO shooter with a built in fanbase, just fantastic.”
To which Schreier said: “Oh they definitely have an issue with that.”
Fairly innocuous exchange, right? Like, you’ve got to imagine Sony is concerned with how long it’s taking to make these games – especially as budgets have ballooned this generation.
Well earlier today, a Reddit thread popped up misrepresenting Schreier’s words, insinuating he was saying PlayStation is unhappy specifically with Naughty Dog.
This, of course, was catnip for social media, and it went everywhere for an hour or so before Schreier responded.
Writing on Reddit, he said:
“It wouldn’t need any clarification if people would stop just posting my replies out of context with wildly misleading tweets and headlines.
I reported that Sony hadn’t greenlit Destiny 3 because of the cost. Someone said something about Sony having an issue with Destiny 3’s cost but not Naughty Dog’s costs. I said of course they had an issue with Naughty Dog’s costs.
And somehow that was misinterpreted by wide swaths of the Internet to mean that Sony is angry at Naughty Dog? Absurd.”
The problem with stories like this, and the reason I often try to debunk them, is they go viral on social media – often without any clarification or correction.
This leads to false narratives spreading, and unfortunately people rarely ever look into the actual source.
I don’t think it’s a surprise to learn Sony is concerned about lengthening dev cycles and inflating budgets, but the way Schreier’s comments were misinterpreted made this seem like a much more dramatic story than it actually was.
