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Update: Sony have confirmed that other studios that are affected by layoffs include Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, as well as their Technology, Creative, and Support teams.
Sony are laying off 900 PlayStation workers which is around 8 per cent of their overall headcount. The layoffs will affect various studios in the USA, Europe and Japan. PlayStation London Studio, known for VR games like Blood and Truth and VR Worlds will be completely shut down while Horizon Call of the Mountain developer Firesprite have also suffered major layoffs.
Here is the statement from Jim Ryan, announcing these layoffs:
The PlayStation community means everything to us, so I felt it was important to update you on a difficult day at our company. We have made the extremely hard decision to announce our plan to commence a reduction of our overall headcount globally by about 8% or about 900 people, subject to local law and consultation processes. Employees across the globe, including our studios, are impacted.
Ryan also shared the email that he personally sent to PlayStation Studios today, in which he explained why Sony had to let 900 people go. Ryan say the goal is to streamline their resources to be able to deliver video games that players expect.
"We had to step back, look at our business holistically, and move forward focusing on the long-term sustainability of the company and delivering the best experiences possible for our community. The goal is to streamline our resources to ensure our continued success and ability to deliver experiences gamers and creators have come to expect from us."
At the moment, it's not clear which PlayStation Studios are affected as we only know of Firesprite and the London Studio. It does appear that the UK division of PlayStation got hit pretty hard as various functions across SIE in this country have been reduced.
In Japan, Sony say they will implement a next career support program while in other countries, the publisher will "begin conversations with those who are potentially at risk or impacted as a result of this proposed course of action."
Unfortunately, this is just another massive wave of layoffs in the gaming industry over the last several months. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced they are laying off over 1,900 people across Xbox, Bethesda and Activision Blizzard while publishers like Embracer also fired hundreds of developers.
It's certainly a grim time for the gaming industry which has seen major growth during the Covid period when many publishers were actively hiring people to deliver content, only to see a stagnation in the recent year, resulting in these major layoffs.
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