Call of Duty is a very popular first-person shooter game series, and one of its developers is the Treyarch studio. Jason Brendell, former co-head of Treyarch Studios and director of the Call of Duty: Black Ops franchise, is a well-known figure in the gaming world. He left Treyarch Studios in 2020 and then founded a new game studio with his colleague Dave Anthony in 2021 called Deviation Games. The studio has a partnership agreement with Sony and is working on a new original game for the PlayStation platform. However, he also left Mutant Games in 2022 without revealing his next steps, but now it looks like the Call of Duty veteran is back in the arms of Sony.
Jason Blundell and Mutant Games partner Sony.
Jason Blundell and Dave Anthony announced their new studio mutation in June 2021, as well as their partnership with Sony. They say they're working on a "brand new original game" that has been in development for more than a year. They also revealed that the game will be an "innovative, high-quality, and fun" game, but did not reveal any specific details.
On September 9, 2022, Mutant Games released a statement announcing that Jason Brendell had left the studio and that Dave Anthony would continue to lead the studio and serve as the game director for the unannounced game. The statement did not say the reason for Jason Brendell's departure, nor did it reveal his future plans.
Jason Blundell hasn't been public about his next move since he left Mutant Games, but recently, it was revealed that he has returned to Sony. A streamer and game designer named jcbackfire shared a job update on his Twitter in which he said he is now a junior game designer at Sony Studios and that he works for Jason Brendell. This news came as a surprise to many. His tweet reads:
I've wanted to talk about it for a long time, but now I finally can!I'm a junior game designer at @playstation studios. And I work for Jason Blundell.
JCBACKFIRE previously worked at Mutant Games, but was laid off in May 2022 when the studio allegedly laid off 90 employees. He may have worked with Jason Blundell when he was mutating games, which may be the reason why Jason Blundell brought him back to work with him after he left the studio. It's unclear how long Jason Brendel has been with Sony, though. JCBACKFIRE also said that he had wanted to share the news "for a long time", meaning he had not been allowed before. Now that he has made his position public, Sony may release an official statement soon.