Bend Studio, which was previously known as Blank, Berlyn & Co., Inc. and Eidetic, Inc., is an American company that creates video games. It is located in Bend, Oregon, and was founded in 1992. The studio is most famous for making the games Bubsy 3D, the Syphon Filter series, and Days Gone. Since 2000, Bend Studio has worked as an official developer for Sony Interactive Entertainment as part of PlayStation Studios.
History
Marc Blank and Michael Berlyn started a company called Blank, Berlyn & Co. in 1992. Blank had previously worked at Infocom, where he helped create games, and Berlyn had also worked at Infocom before joining Accolade. Blank was contacted by a California company after an employee remembered that Infocom made games and used software called Cornerstone. The company wanted to create a "sound-oriented game machine for cars," and Blank suggested making sports games that sounded like radio broadcasts. This idea was not produced, so Blank used it to create an American football video game that sounded like a TV broadcast. In 1992, he shared this idea with Berlyn, asking if Accolade would be interested in making the game.
After the 1993 release of Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind, Berlyn took a break from Accolade. Blank and Berlyn then began making games under the name Blank, Berlyn & Co. Blank became the president of the company. Their first games were Columbo's Mystery Capers and Dell Crossword Puzzles, which were released in November 1993 for the Apple Newton by StarCore, Apple’s publishing label for the device. Two more games, Dell Crossword Puzzles and Other Word Games and Motile, were released in June 1994. Arnie Katz of Electronic Games said these games were very successful. Later, Russ Wetmore, who worked on Preppie! II, joined the company after working at Apple for seven years. Wetmore and Blank created a football game called Live Action Football using ScriptX, which allowed it to be released on both Microsoft Windows and Macintosh systems. Accolade published the game in November 1994 as the first in a planned series of sports games. The next game in the series was to be a baseball game.
After these releases, Blank, Berlyn & Co. changed its name to Eidetic in April 1995 and hired Christopher Reese as technical director. Under the name Eidetic, the company developed Bubsy 3D, its first console and 3D game, with a team of about eight people. The game was released in 1996 for the PlayStation but was not successful, partly because it competed with Crash Bandicoot. Later, 989 Studios, a part of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), asked Eidetic to develop Syphon Filter, an action and stealth game. John Garvin, the creative director, said SCE trusted Eidetic because it had experience making PlayStation games and already had a game engine to use. However, developing Syphon Filter was difficult because Eidetic had no prior experience with stealth-action games. The company grew to thirteen employees, but Berlyn left due to dissatisfaction with the video game industry and the nature of the game. The project faced delays and changes, and was nearly canceled multiple times. Despite these challenges, SCE producer Connie Booth supported the project. Syphon Filter was released in 1999 and sold over one million copies.
Eidetic continued making Syphon Filter games for SCE, creating six more until 2007. In 2000, SCE bought the company and renamed it Bend Studio. Bend Studio wanted to make games for a new franchise and decided to create a Resistance game for the PlayStation Portable because Resistance and Syphon Filter had similar themes. Bend Studio made a demo of the game and showed it to SCE producers and the original Resistance developer, Insomniac Games, who approved the project. The game, Resistance: Retribution, was released in 2009. Afterward, Bend Studio worked on Uncharted: Golden Abyss for the PlayStation Vita. After several rejected ideas, Naughty Dog, the franchise developer, approved Bend Studio’s plan for the game. Bend Studio used assets from Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and also worked on Uncharted: Fight for Fortune with One Loop Games.
Bend Studio’s first original game after Syphon Filter was Days Gone, released in April 2019 for the PlayStation 4. John Garvin and the game’s director, Jeff Ross, left the studio by December 2020. Garvin claimed he was fired for having a "disruptive personality." Bend Studio later distanced itself from Garvin after he criticized "woke" reviewers on Twitter for the game’s mixed reception.
As of June 2021, Bend Studio was working on a new game based on the open-world systems from Days Gone. In June 2022, the studio unveiled a new logo. In January 2025, Sony canceled a live-service game that Bend Studio had been developing since 2021. In June 2025, Jason Schreier of Bloomberg reported that Bend Studio had laid off 30% of its staff, about 40 employees. Sony confirmed the layoffs but did not specify the exact number of affected employees.