Sony is laying off around 900 employees at PlayStation, affecting roughly eight percent of the gaming division’s total global workforce.
Several studios are impacted by the job cuts, including three of PlayStation’s most beloved teams: Naughty Dog (The Last of Us), Insomniac (Marvel’s Spider-Man) and Guerrilla (Horizon).
As part of the restructuring, PlayStation’s London Studio will also be closed entirely. The British developer was founded in 2002 and worked on notable titles like the popular Singstar series, the EyeToy peripheral and, most recently, the PS VR game Blood & Truth. The team had been working on an online co-op combat game set in fantasy London.
After the news broke, people also quickly pointed out outgoing PlayStation boss Jim Ryan was recently seen taking smiling photos with London Studio staff, even though he undoubtedly knew at the time that he’d be shutting down their studio mere days later.
London Studio, five days ago https://t.co/CSayOrgmEU
— Hit Points by Nathan Brown (@nathan_brown) February 27, 2024
In addition to London Studio, fellow Sony-owned English developer Firesprite has been hit with layoffs and has cancelled a Twisted Metal live service game that was early in development, according to Bloomberg.
It doesn’t appear that any layoffs have been made at Montreal-based Haven, PlayStation’s sole Canadian team that’s working on the multiplayer shooter Fairgame$.
In a statement, Sony justified the layoffs by saying “the industry has changed immensely, and we need to future ready ourselves to set the business up for what lies ahead.” Added PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst: “Delivering the immersive, narrative-driven stories that PlayStation Studios is known for, at the quality bar that we aspire to, requires a re-evaluation of how we operate.”
The PlayStation layoffs are the latest in a significant string of job cuts within the gaming industry as of late. Last year, more than 10,000 workers were laid off, including those at PlayStation’s Naughty Dog, Bungie and Media Molecule, Microsoft’s 343 Industries and The Coalition, Epic Games, EA’s BioWare Edmonton and Amazon’s Twitch.
If that weren’t enough, the industry has nearly reached last year’s total number of layoffs in just two months. Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen major layoffs at the likes of Xbox, Twitch, Discord, Unity, League of Legends maker Riot and Montreal-based Dead by Daylight studio Behaviour Interactive.
Altogether, an estimated 6100 gaming industry employees have already been laid off this year, according to a tracker created by technical artist Farhan Noor.
Image credit: PlayStation
Source: Sony
