Imagine strapping on a PSVR headset and stepping into Walter White's backyard, the New Mexico desert stretching out around you. That almost happened. New details have surfaced of a Breaking Bad VR experience that Firesprite developed for PlayStation between 2017 and 2018, before it was quietly cancelled and buried for nearly a decade.
The report, published by MP1st, pulls back the curtain on a turbulent period at the Liverpool-based studio long before its acquisition by Sony in 2021. And the Breaking Bad project is only part of the story.
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What the Cancelled Game Actually Was
The Breaking Bad title wasn't a full-scale open-world game. It was conceived as a narrative VR "experience," closer in spirit to the Stranger Things tie-in VR game than anything resembling a traditional AAA release. The project would have placed players inside iconic locations from the show, including Walter White's backyard and the sweeping New Mexico desert.
Here's the thing: this wasn't just a rumour floating around the internet. Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad, personally confirmed the collaboration on the Inside The Gilliverse podcast back in 2022. He acknowledged that real effort and real money had gone into development before it was pulled. "Making a video game is damn hard," Gilligan said. "It takes years and millions of dollars, especially when you're trying to break new ground with VR."
The project ran from 2017 to 2018, placing it firmly in the early PSVR era, when Sony was actively pushing VR as the next frontier for PlayStation. That context matters because it explains both the ambition and the eventual cancellation. VR development at that scale, with a licensed IP attached, was a significant risk.
For the full breakdown of the original report, this investigation into Firesprite's cancelled projects goes deep on what was lost.
Firesprite's Other Cancelled Project: A Sci-Fi Horror IP
The Breaking Bad VR experience wasn't the only casualty. Firesprite was simultaneously developing an original sci-fi horror IP described as a Dead Space-style body horror game. Concept art uncovered by MP1st shows zombified humans with monstrous, almost polygonal limbs sprouting from their bodies, which sounds genuinely unsettling in the best possible way.
That project never made it past the prototype stage and was cancelled in 2020, two years after the Breaking Bad project was shelved. Two ambitious games, both gone before most people even knew they existed.
A Studio That Has Seen Better Days
Firesprite's history since joining PlayStation has been rough. Reports have pointed to mandated crunch during Horizon Call of the Mountain development, a cancelled live-service Twisted Metal game, a mass exodus of talent including nearly all of the studio's co-founders, and allegations of toxic workplace culture under new management brought in from XDev. Sony dismissed those allegations as a "misunderstanding."
What the new investigation makes clear is that Firesprite's struggles didn't start with the acquisition. They stretch back years earlier, through cancelled projects and a studio trying to find its footing.
Firesprite's turbulent history
The studio is reportedly still active, currently working on two projects: Project Pillar and Heartbreak, with the latter rumoured to be connected to an established PlayStation IP. Whether Firesprite can turn things around remains to be seen.
What most players miss in stories like this is how many games simply vanish before they ever reach an announcement. A Breaking Bad VR game with Vince Gilligan personally involved, set in locations fans know by heart, confirmed to have had significant development work behind it. That's not a pitch deck. That was a real game, and it's gone.
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