A pair of Sony’s studios have been seemingly hit by layoffs. Abby LeMaster, formerly a project manager at PlayStation Visual Arts, has revealed through a post on LinkedIn that the studio, along with one of its support studios based out of Malaysia, has seen many people affected by these layoffs.
“It was tough waking up to messages that many friends and former coworkers from PSVA were laid off this morning,” wrote LeMaster. “The layoffs today hit hard. PSVA let go of developers with decades of subject matter expertise, talent that will be extraordinarily difficult to recoup. This industry can be unpredictable, but the skill, experience, and passion of the people I worked with at PSVA are undeniable.”
According to Kotaku, these layoffs are the result of quite a few in-development PlayStation projects having been cancelled. This includes the open world live-service game that was under development at Bend Studio. The report indicates that the layoffs have been quite widespread, however.
For context, PlayStation Visual Arts is a support studio that helped other internal projects at PlayStation by working on art assets, as well as offering technical support. The studio has in the past worked with Naughty Dog on its remasters of The Last of Us Part 1 and Part 2.
Several projects at PlayStation have been cancelled recently. Along with Bend’s game, The Last of Us Online, a multiplayer game based on Marvel’s Spider-Man, and even a reboot of Twisted Metal were some of the cancelled projects.
Recently, a rumour indicated that the reboot of Twisted Metal would have been a battle royale game that would feature a mix of the series’ traditional vehicular combat along with on-foot third-person shooter combat. The game was also seemingly being developed using Unreal Engine 5.
Reports have indicated that several of these cancellations came about thanks to the catastrophic failure of multiplayer shooter Concord. The game, released last year, saw its servers shut down in less than a month of its original release.
Sony has stated that, while it has been cancelling a few projects, it won’t be closing down any of its studios.
“Bend and Bluepoint are highly accomplished teams who are valued members of the PlayStation Studios family, and we are working closely with each studio to determine what are the next projects,” said a Sony spokesperson earlier this year.
These recent cancellations and layoffs have run counter to Sony’s plans back in 2023, when it intended to release 12 live service games before April 2026. At the time, this included multiplayer games across various Sony franchises, including Horizon and the since-cancelled The Last of Us.
Shuhei Yoshida has spoken about this push for live-service games that Sony had after leaving the company earlier this year. In an interview, he spoke about how he would have pushed back against PlayStation going so heavily into live-service games, since the company’s success has largely come about thanks to its single-player releases.
For context, the most successful live-service game released by Sony in recent times has been Helldivers 2, which has recently been celebrating its first anniversary. Helldivers 2 is available on PC and PS5.
