Bend Studio Hunts Community Manager as Its Next AAA Game Stays Secret

Bend Studio, the Sony-owned developer best known for the 2019 open-world zombie game Days Gone, is hiring a community manager to work on what its job posting calls the studio’s “next game.” The listing describes the project as a AAA title, and says the successful candidate will talk with players about it across social media, run platform strategies, organize community events and generally keep the player base warm. Kevin McAllister, the studio’s brand and communications manager, shared the opening publicly. The role is expected to begin in January.

What the posting does not say is when anyone outside the studio will get to see the game. No reveal date has been announced, and the hiring notice gives no hint of a title, a genre or a release window. For a studio whose last shipped project came out in April 2019, that silence is the story.

Bend Studio has had a turbulent stretch since Days Gone arrived on PlayStation 4. The game sold well enough to become a fixture in PlayStation’s catalog and later came to PC, but a planned follow-up was not greenlit, and the studio went through layoffs and a change of direction. In the years since, it has worked on other projects that were not ultimately announced as its own. A community manager hire is a small signal, but it is the kind of signal that usually appears once a team is confident a game will eventually be shown to players.

The timing is notable for another reason. Community roles are typically filled months before a marketing campaign begins, not years. Whoever takes the job will need to build an audience around a game that does not yet have a name, which means the early work will likely focus on the studio’s existing fans rather than on a specific product.

For players, the practical takeaway is modest. A hiring notice is not a reveal, and studios regularly staff up for projects that stay under wraps for a long time. But it does confirm that Bend is actively building something substantial, and that Sony is willing to fund a community operation around it. In an industry where studios are frequently shrunk or closed, a new AAA project at a veteran first-party developer is worth noting.

The broader context is a PlayStation first-party lineup in transition. Several of Sony’s internal studios are working on projects that have been announced without release dates, while others have been restructured. Bend’s position is unusual: it is a smaller studio with a loyal following, a single well-known franchise and something new in the works that it is not ready to describe.

Until the studio says more, the job listing is the most concrete public information available. Anyone hoping to hear about Bend’s next game will have to wait for an announcement that, for now, has no date attached. What is clear is that the studio intends to have someone talking to players well before the game itself shows up.