Canceled Twisted Metal Game Was Part Vehicular Combat, Part Shooter, Part Battle Royale, Dev Says

Brand new images of Sony’s canceled Twisted Metal game have popped up online, hinting that developer Firesprite was making a live service that blended the series’ signature vehicular combat with battle royale mechanics.

A former UI developer at Sony-owned Firesprite uploaded a handful of screenshots to their online portfolio, and while the images are intentionally blurred and labeled “Under NDA,” they are included under the codename Project Copper, which is believed to have been the internal name for the unannounced live-service Twisted Metal game.

Although Twisted Metal is a vehicle combat video game franchise that began life on the PSone and hasn’t seen a new entry since the PlayStation 3 generation, the developer stated Project Copper was a “third-person vehicular action combat game based on a classic IP owned by PlayStation and developed by Firesprite.”

They added: “It had third-person shooter mechanics wrapped with third-person vehicle combat with the objective of being the last one standing” (thanks, MP1st).

Sony reportedly canceled Twisted Metal as part of mass layoffs announced in February 2024. At the time, the game “wasn’t yet greenlit” but had been in development at UK studio Firesprite, which Sony confirmed was impacted by the cuts.

Twisted Metal fell by the wayside amid a pull back from live service games at Sony following a huge internal push to make more of these types of games. Naughty Dog stopped development on The Last of Us Online in December 2023, saying it would have needed to put all its resources into post-launch content for years to come — an approach that would have severely impacted its ability to develop future single-player games.

While Arrowhead’s Helldivers 2 was a breakout hit, becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game of all time with 12 million copies sold in just 12 weeks, Sony’s live service hero shooter Concord was one of the biggest video game disasters in PlayStation history, lasting just a couple of weeks before it was brought offline amid eye-wateringly low player numbers. Sony later decided to kill the game entirely and shut its developer.

And in January, Sony canceled two unannounced live service games, one a God of War title in development at Bluepoint, the other in the works at Days Gone developer Bend.

While it looks like we won’t be getting another Twisted Metal game any time soon, the Twisted Metal TV series starring Anthony Mackie is set to continue with Season 2 on Peacock. IGN’s Twisted Metal Season 1 review returned an 8/10. We said: “Though overloaded with jokes at times, Twisted Metal is a miraculously enjoyable blend of comedy, violence, and thoughtfulness.”

Vikki Blake is a reporter, critic, columnist, and consultant. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.