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News PlayStation laying off 900 staff worldwide (8%) - Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Guerilla, Firesprite affected, Projects Cancelled, shutting London Studio

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Good grief. This has got to be one of the shittiest starts to a year the industry has ever had. It feels like every week another company is announcing hundreds of layoffs. I feel for everyone affected by all this.
 
Really horrible, especially considering the amount of acquisitions Sony has made over the years and their success. I've been skeptical about the possibility of a Playstation 6 and Sony's future in the industry for a while now so this is sadly unsurprising.
 
Hailinel said:
Launching a GAAS-based game to immediate success is like trying to play roulette, and Sony put far too many chips on different numbers on the wheel.

Yeah, Helldivers is popular, but the same can't be said for every other GAAS title Sony devs have worked on. Naughty Dog spun their wheels for years on a TLOU GAAS game that they ended up scrapping. And it wouldn't surprise me if the ND layoffs announced today involved mostly if not entirely people that worked on it.
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It was definitely them clutching at straws trying to reverse the position they put themselves in. It was never gonna work in the original timeframe or even a good strategy in general.
 
Wishing the best to all the developers affected by those decisions.

I hope that all the people who lost their job end up doing what they love in a place that values and respects them, and pays a good living wage sooner rather than later.

And I also hope the remaining SIE employees don't find themselves flooded by crunch, having to do the job of 10 people at once because of those layoffs.

These decisions have been extremely difficult, but they are necessary,
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Hahahahahaha fuck you.
 
Fucking hell, just awful. I don't get how you just lay off hundreds of some world class developers. Capitalism is so fucked.
 
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So I have a question, does this "restructuring" with all these layoffs have any effect on the PS5 Pro? Or is that a done deal regardless? I guess my point is if Sony is doing all these things right now, how does that bode for a PS5 Pro?

Might be two different situations here, but if they're that concerned about their revenue/profits, how does the PS5 Pro fit into that?
 
Wow. This is extremely saddening. My heart hurts for all those who have been laid off. As @korok said, this really puts the Switch 2 delay into perspective… there are much MUCH worse things happening in the industry than a four-month delay for a console that’s coming regardless. I can’t help but fear for the future of this industry… with each layoff, more cracks begin to show in the sustainability of AAA video gaming.

From the bottom of my heart, I really wish the best of luck to everyone impacted by this and hope they can get back on their feet swiftly.
 
awful, just fucking awful. all those talented developers and employees whose lives are more then likely in disarray now, and all because executives in this godforsaken industry continue to make the most incompetent decisions fathomable.
 
Hailinel said:
I think what they mean is that while Sony is a Japanese company, the PlayStation division of Sony is effectively American af this point. Jim Ryan reorganized the entire PS business, shuttered Japan Studio, put Hermen Hulst in charge of PlayStation Studios, and has generally made the entire division his fiefdom.
It was under him, and Hulst, that all of Sony's first party studios began pursuing either AAA cinematic games that cost a zillion dollars, or GAAS liveservice titles that are always a gamble to begin with.

Their leadership is incompetent and their culture is toxic. And it all ties back to Ryan being put in charge.
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I understood, but I was pointing out that the man sent to SIE by Sony to oversee change and name the next successor for the branch is Totoki.
Are we to expect any positive changes from a bean counter who's a bigger bean counter than Jim Ryan?
This is a man who came in and the first thing that came out of his mouth is obsession with growth and profit margins.
What is he really going to change in a positive manner from our perspective?


I have to push back on zillion dollar games slightly, this was already in motion during the PS4 era and reinforced due to the runaway success of pretty much every blockbuster SIE game starting with Uncharted 4 in 2016.

HZD in 2017
GoW and Spider-Man 1 in 2018
Days Gone in 2019 was a stumble from a critical reception but not a commercial failure
GoT and TLoU Part II were 2020

And if you look at the smaller games that did get released by SIE during those times, I'm fairly sure most of them were loss leaders or barely broke even. The PlayStation consumers rejected those games.
 
Evilnemesis8 said:
I understood, but I was pointing out that the man sent to SIE by Sony to oversee change and name the next successor for the branch is Totoki.
Are we to expect any positive changes from a bean counter who's a bigger bean counter than Jim Ryan?
This is a man who came in and the first thing that came out of his mouth is obsession with growth and profit margins.
What is he really going to change in a positive manner from our perspective?


I have to push back on zillion dollar games slightly, this was already in motion during the PS4 era starting starting with and reinforced due to the runaway success of pretty much every blockbuster SIE game starting with Uncharted 4 in 2016.

HZD in 2017
GoW and Spider-Man 1 in 2018
Days Gone in 2019 was a stumble from a critical reception but not a commercial failure
GoT and TLoU Part II were 2020

And if you look at the smaller games that did get released by SIE during those times, I'm fairly sure most of them were loss leaders or barely broke even. The PlayStation consumers rejected those games.
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All we really know is that Totoki is a bean counter, but also Sony HQ can't possibly be in any way happy with the current direction of PlayStation. PlayStation at one point almost singlehandedly kept Sony afloat at a point when the rest of their electronics were floundering and their movies were flailing. Now PlayStation is barely breaking even for itself. So I'd be shocked if they don't enact some larger structural upheaval to unscrew what Ryan screwed.

EDIT: Also, having a more bean counter/finance background isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. Tatsumi Kimishima was put in charge of Nintendo after Iwata's death, but he was only in that role for a very short time to manage the Switch's launch and internal restructuring of Nintendo's corporate ranks to better future proof the company.
 
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Hailinel said:
Launching a GAAS-based game to immediate success is like trying to play roulette, and Sony put far too many chips on different numbers on the wheel.

Yeah, Helldivers is popular, but the same can't be said for every other GAAS title Sony devs have worked on. Naughty Dog spun their wheels for years on a TLOU GAAS game that they ended up scrapping. And it wouldn't surprise me if the ND layoffs announced today involved mostly if not entirely people that worked on it.
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the sad thing is isn't Helldivers like the only one from this GAAS pivot to even come out and have a chance to succeed/fail yet?

so many GAAS titles getting shelved before even seeing the light of day, these things are such a boondoggle
 
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Shoulder said:
So I have a question, does this "restructuring" with all these layoffs have any effect on the PS5 Pro? Or is that a done deal regardless? I guess my point is if Sony is doing all these things right now, how does that bode for a PS5 Pro?

Might be two different situations here, but if they're that concerned about their revenue/profits, how does the PS5 Pro fit into that?
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PS5P is a done deal at this point considering they want it to allegedly come out this year. These layoffs will most likely target the software side as we can see from those who are being affected. When it comes to revenue/profit, 5Pro will probably continue from the latest financials of Sony; that is to say a high cost device that is hard to cost down with thin margins.
 
Evilnemesis8 said:
I understood, but I was pointing out that the man sent to SIE by Sony to oversee change and name the next successor for the branch is Totoki.
Are we to expect any positive changes from a bean counter who's a bigger bean counter than Jim Ryan?
This is a man who came in and the first thing that came out of his mouth is obsession with growth and profit margins.
What is he really going to change in a positive manner from our perspective?


I have to push back on zillion dollar games slightly, this was already in motion during the PS4 era and reinforced due to the runaway success of pretty much every blockbuster SIE game starting with Uncharted 4 in 2016.

HZD in 2017
GoW and Spider-Man 1 in 2018
Days Gone in 2019 was a stumble from a critical reception but not a commercial failure
GoT and TLoU Part II were 2020

And if you look at the smaller games that did get released by SIE during those times, I'm fairly sure most of them were loss leaders or barely broke even. The PlayStation consumers rejected those games.
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It is a shame. Dreams didn't take off, Concrete Genie didn't do so hot, and Japan Studio never got a big win aside from Bloodborne (which was a co-production with From Software). Sackboy didn't seem like it took off either.

It's kinda sad honestly. They didn't nurture those smaller budget games at all in comparison. A lot of these games failed because Sony didn't market them at all.
 
Lugia667 said:
....isn't it also kinda messed up that they did they the same day as FF released? An attempt to bury the news perhaps?
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I don't think there is any correlation here. Sony was hinting at layoffs in their recent financial meeting. Plus, layoffs have been the talk of the industry for a while now.

You can't really bury the news about closing a studio when you are Sony. It is going to stick for a while. Hell, people are still pissed about Japan Studio.
 
Evilnemesis8 said:
And if you look at the smaller games that did get released by SIE during those times, I'm fairly sure most of them were loss leaders or barely broke even. The PlayStation consumers rejected those games.
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Because Sony trained their audience to be treated as throwaway stuff that they weren't interested in supporting long term.

Nintendo just made a new Endless Ocean the big endcard on their big quarterly (well, thirdly) advertising for the season. Sony would do that over their dead body, and that's the difference between the companies. Nintendo realised two decades ago the power race wasn't sustainable, and not just from the hardware side. They realised that developing a continuous supply of smaller titles was incredibly important to keeping audiences engaged where ever possible because the big BOTW/TOTK tentpoles can only come every half a decade and you need to keep them engaged in those big inbetween periods.

Sony instead did their best to make sure their smaller titles couldn't even begin to build an audience, doing things like only supporting the online functions of titles like Gravity rush for months after launch, because they had no interest in even trying to keep titles like that alive. Now the company is reaping what it sowed in terms of their bottom line, and it's hurting their employees instead of the ones who made those decisions.
 
Linkstrikesback said:
Because Sony trained their audience to be treated as throwaway stuff that they weren't interested in supporting long term.

Nintendo just made a new Endless Ocean the big endcard on their big quarterly (well, thirdly) advertising for the season. Sony would do that over their dead body, and that's the difference between the companies. Nintendo realised two decades ago the power race wasn't sustainable, and not just from the hardware side. They realised that developing a continuous supply of smaller titles was incredibly important to keeping audiences engaged where ever possible because the big BOTW/TOTK tentpoles can only come every half a decade and you need to keep them engaged in those big inbetween periods.

Sony instead did their best to make sure their smaller titles couldn't even begin to build an audience, doing things like only supporting the online functions of titles like Gravity rush for months after launch, because they had no interest in even trying to keep titles like that alive. Now the company is reaping what it sowed in terms of their bottom line, and it's hurting their employees instead of the ones who made those decisions.
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Interesting Sony and MS have similar but different issues - MS trained their audience not to buy games and Sony trained theirs to only purchase huge budget blockbusters and expect multiple of them every year
 
Given how quickly things can change, I'm weary of believing that Nintendo will remain one of the exceptions to this trend.

I hope they do, because fucking hell it would be nice to see one of the big three not feel the need to balance the books through layoffs.
 
JR436 said:
Given how quickly things can change, I'm weary of believing that Nintendo will remain one of the exceptions to this trend.

I hope they do, because fucking hell it would be nice to see one of the big three not feel the need to balance the books through layoffs.
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Nintendo has absurd profit ratios and a massive amount of cash on hand that other companies "reinvest", specifically so that this will never be their problem.

They made it through the Wii U without ever having to do layoffs, it's not a real concern anyone should have regarding if Nintendo will have to do the same.

(That being said they've definitely let weaker partners that they were essentially the lifeline for go, ala Cing or Alphadream, so they're not as completely blame free as some might thing)
 
Linkstrikesback said:
Nintendo has absurd profit ratios and a massive amount of cash on hand that other companies "reinvest", specifically so that this will never be their problem.

They made it through the Wii U without ever having to do layoffs, it's not a real concern anyone should have regarding if Nintendo will have to do the same.

(That being said they've definitely let weaker partners that they were essentially the lifeline for go, ala Cing or Alphadream, so they're not as completely blame free as some might thing)
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There's a difference between being part of Nintendo proper and a third party that Nintendo works with on specific projects. Alpha Dream didn't die because Nintendo didn't bail them out. They died because they were completely unprepared for a transition to HD dev, the Mario & Luigi series had stagnated, and their PS4 game failed to get off the ground.

Nintendo buying or putting significant investment into every small studio they work with would have its own drawbacks.
 
Dutch media reporting 10% of Guerilla has been laid off
https://www.ad.nl/games/ontslagrond...la-tientallen-medewerkers-op-straat~a492e6fb/

"PlayStation did not say how many people were fired, but insiders told this newspaper that it concerns ten percent of the staff, or about forty of the more than four hundred employees. A PlayStation spokesperson was not yet prepared to comment on the news on Tuesday afternoon.
Staff were informed during the afternoon whether they were affected." (Google Translated)
 
Hailinel said:
There's a difference between being part of Nintendo proper and a third party that Nintendo works with on specific projects. Alpha Dream didn't die because Nintendo didn't bail them out. They died because they were completely unprepared for a transition to HD dev, the Mario & Luigi series had stagnated, and their PS4 game failed to get off the ground.

Nintendo buying or putting significant investment into every small studio they work with would have its own drawbacks.
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Right, they didn't technically do anything, and certainly they were under no legal obligations to do so, but Alphadream at the time of the studios closure had effectively been working for Nintendo practically exclusively for something like fifteen years. They certainly didn't have any explicit responsibility to make sure the company stayed open, but that's only on paper. They made the decision to bring their working relationship to an end, likely based on the limited success of their later projects, and the reality is that making that business decision would have been the primary thing to lead to the studios doors shuttering and there's no reason to pretend they're blameless for not intervening sooner like they perhaps could have. The PS4 game would have been a last ditch effort when it became clear that their relation with Nintendo was at an end

Nintendo refused to keep their working relationship going (i.e., bail them out) because they didn't think the company was worth the investment for them to be able to make the transition to HD dev, and they were probably right from a business perspective, but that doesn't make it so different to Sony deciding to no longer invest in, say the VR development team at London studio.

All I was saying is Nintendo isn't completely above making this same kind of harsh decision, even if thankfully they avoid it in most cases.
 
I don’t even see how this is a good decision, it’s going to fuck them over In the long run, they already can’t make games fast enough, are we gonna have a grand total of 7 Sony games each Gen max.
 
Linkstrikesback said:
Right, they didn't technically do anything, and certainly they were under no legal obligations to do so, but Alphadream at the time of the studios closure had effectively been working for Nintendo practically exclusively for something like fifteen years. They certainly didn't have any explicit responsibility to make sure the company stayed open, but that's only on paper. They made the decision to bring their working relationship to an end, likely based on the limited success of their later projects, and the reality is that making that business decision would have been the primary thing to lead to the studios doors shuttering and there's no reason to pretend they're blameless for not intervening sooner like they perhaps could have. The PS4 game would have been a last ditch effort when it became clear that their relation with Nintendo was at an end

Nintendo refused to keep their working relationship going (i.e., bail them out) because they didn't think the company was worth the investment for them to be able to make the transition to HD dev, and they were probably right from a business perspective, but that doesn't make it so different to Sony deciding to no longer invest in, say the VR development team at London studio.

All I was saying is Nintendo isn't completely above making this same kind of harsh decision, even if thankfully they avoid it in most cases.
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It was never Nintendo's responsibility to recruit or staff up AD for HD dev, or to perform any other corporate admin tasks that were the responsibility of AD's leadership.

It's frankly ridiculous to be citing AD's closure as an example of Nintendo doing awful things in a thread about Sony slashing 900 jobs across multiple first-party studios. And it was Sony and Microsoft's mass gobbling of developers that in part led to the current state of these mass layoffs we're seeing now.

Does Nintendo do shit things? Absolutely. But "they worked with a studio for 15 years" doesn't mean they ever had an obligation to buy them and assume their debts. It's not even clear that AD ever even entertained pursuing discussions about being acquired.
 
JR436 said:
Given how quickly things can change, I'm weary of believing that Nintendo will remain one of the exceptions to this trend.

I hope they do, because fucking hell it would be nice to see one of the big three not feel the need to balance the books through layoffs.
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doesn't Japan actually have laws preventing mass layoffs unless things are REALLY bad? I've noticed that the Japanese companies doing layoffs have all done it with their western divisions

 
Linkstrikesback said:
Right, they didn't technically do anything, and certainly they were under no legal obligations to do so, but Alphadream at the time of the studios closure had effectively been working for Nintendo practically exclusively for something like fifteen years. They certainly didn't have any explicit responsibility to make sure the company stayed open, but that's only on paper. They made the decision to bring their working relationship to an end, likely based on the limited success of their later projects, and the reality is that making that business decision would have been the primary thing to lead to the studios doors shuttering and there's no reason to pretend they're blameless for not intervening sooner like they perhaps could have. The PS4 game would have been a last ditch effort when it became clear that their relation with Nintendo was at an end

Nintendo refused to keep their working relationship going (i.e., bail them out) because they didn't think the company was worth the investment for them to be able to make the transition to HD dev, and they were probably right from a business perspective, but that doesn't make it so different to Sony deciding to no longer invest in, say the VR development team at London studio.

All I was saying is Nintendo isn't completely above making this same kind of harsh decision, even if thankfully they avoid it in most cases.
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The two cases aren’t the ‘same kind of harsh decision’ at all. There’s a huge difference between a multinational laying off hundreds of their own staff that were working on the projects they were told to, only for the service game bubble to seem to have burst, and not bailing out an independent third party developer that’s free to pitch for whatever projects on whatever platforms it wants to do.
 
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Derachi said:
Fucking deplorable.



Look at the smile on his face knowing full well he’s about to upend every one of their lives. Look how happy he is.

Absolutely nauseating.
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Not everything has to be so evil. C'mon.
_______________________________________

On one hand, I'm happy they're leaving/cutting down live service games. But at the same time it's sad to see so many people affected.
 
TLZ said:
Not everything has to be so evil. C'mon.
_______________________________________

On one hand, I'm happy they're leaving/cutting down live service games. But at the same time it's sad to see so many people affected.
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Please, tell me what is not evil about taking a smiling happy picture around a bunch of people whose lives you know full well you’re days away from upending. Please tell me what’s not evil about that. Tell me how any human with an ounce of sympathy for their fellow human, that hasn’t had their very human nature completely wrecked by capitalistic ideals of the myth of “neverending quarterly growth of shareholder value” would be so happy to take a picture like this. Please tell me.
 
Hailinel said:
There's a difference between being part of Nintendo proper and a third party that Nintendo works with on specific projects. Alpha Dream didn't die because Nintendo didn't bail them out. They died because they were completely unprepared for a transition to HD dev, the Mario & Luigi series had stagnated, and their PS4 game failed to get off the ground.

Nintendo buying or putting significant investment into every small studio they work with would have its own drawbacks.
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AlphaDream also went bankrupt because they stuck to the 3DS and did those pretty awful remasters of Superstar Saga and BiS, both of which screwed up the original visual identity of the game and were released not just in the twilight year of the 3DS but in the goddamn nocturnal year.

They're like the second to last "big" game release for the 3DS. IIRC their motivation for not putting them on the Switch (which probably would've saved the company, the Switch was kinda needing for second party Nintendo games back then) has to do with wanting to "preserve the dual screen setup" or something silly like that.

Afaik Nintendo didn't make them do that, they chose to head into that direction and Nintendo just OK-stamped it because it's ultimately little skin off of their back.
 
Lugia667 said:
doesn't Japan actually have laws preventing mass layoffs unless things are REALLY bad? I've noticed that the Japanese companies doing layoffs have all done it with their western divisions

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I can't speak with certainty, but this seems to be the case. The situation at the company has to be insanely terrible before the employees are forced to jump ship. Iirc Nintendo did have some layoffs in Nintendo of Europe in 2014 for an example.
 
Lugia667 said:
doesn't Japan actually have laws preventing mass layoffs unless things are REALLY bad? I've noticed that the Japanese companies doing layoffs have all done it with their western divisions
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Yeah you need to establish financial trouble and that you've attempted literally anything that didn't involve laying off people before you can do mass layoffs in Japan. The unions also get a say in the process and there's a 30 day required severance. If any of those things aren't met, the courts just declare the termination invalid and it doesn't apply.

The more common way to get rid of undesired employees in Japan is usually to just not assign them work (but force them to come in)/assign them menial work that would be insulting for the employee in question (if you're say, a programmer, would you want to do custodial duties? No? Well that's what they assign, as an example), until they quit themselves. Usually that also has the advantage for the employee of not needing to explain why they got fired "for cause" at a new job.
 
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This is what happens when you build your brand on making only industry changing blockbuster games. The price to make even a single game becomes higher and higher until games need to sell 10 million to even make a profit, and one failure can result in 8 percent of your workers having to be laid off
 
SoldierDelta said:
Iirc Nintendo did have some layoffs in Nintendo of Europe in 2014 for an example.
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As much i remember, Nintendo moved their main branch from Großostheim to Frankfurt where they had already some offices. Similar to NoA San Francisco, they offered their emloyees to move to the new location. Off course its still bad, but at least they could decide.

Edit:
I need to correct my post: only 300, out of 430 employees could stay at NoE.
 
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Hailinel said:
Also perhaps coincidentally on the same day as a big Pokémon announcement.
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Jokes on them.


On topic though. It's painstakingly obvious that the market needs to stop chasing graphics and horsepower. The focus needs to be on making game development easier and cheaper.

The GPU market is going to be in trouble when there are no developers capable of producing games that push the hardware nvidia and amd are trying to sell. I imagine we are in for a few generations of hardware becoming more efficient, smaller, and cheaper because the incentive just isn't there anymore to make massive games that push 4090s and stuff.
 
I hated some reactions to this online. “Yay, no more live service games” Like, ok... But at what cost? It’s not labor we’re talking about, there’s now another 900 PEOPLE unfortunately joining the shit storm that’s this decade’s layoff epidemic, I feel for them
 
being a nintendo fan rn is like driving through a bunch of wrecked out car crashes. what a shitshow. a shitshow many people saw coming too. turns out expending all of your resources towards appealing at the types of people that lost their shit at some puddles wasn't a good idea.
 
BassForever said:
MM will likely be closed within the next year
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Media Molecule is probably safe until their next release. Sony greenlit their next project last year so they probably have a little wiggle room. They did have some layoffs last September, but the studio seemed to have staved off any cuts this round. If they are working on a new Little Big Planet game, then Sony will most likely give them a long leash. That was a very successful franchise back in the PS3/early PS4 days. Personally, I think they are going for a new IP. Hopefully, whatever they work on comes out great because they are a very talented studio. (Teraway was soooo good) I don't doubt that their next game is make or break though for the studio.

Now, if the studio ends up in another Dreams situation where it takes 8 years to make and they have to restart development twice, Sony will probably be quicker to close them down.
 
MuddySeal said:
I hated some reactions to this online. “Yay, no more live service games” Like, ok... But at what cost? It’s not labor we’re talking about, there’s now another 900 PEOPLE unfortunately joining the shit storm that’s this decade’s layoff epidemic, I feel for them
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Sony will chase the next trend anyway, and then when those don't pan out, lay off even more people in all likelihood. Whole AAA industry feels like it's falling apart at the seams. I don't expect what comes next to be any healthier, sadly.
 
Mekanos said:
Sony will chase the next trend anyway, and then when those don't pan out, lay off even more people in all likelihood. Whole AAA industry feels like it's falling apart at the seams. I don't expect what comes next to be any healthier, sadly.
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I’m hoping they don’t follow Square into scam currency experiments
 
PixelKnight said:
I’m hoping they don’t follow Square into scam currency experiments
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Can't believe it was only a few months ago when people were salivating at the idea of Sony purchasing Square Enix in retaliation of the Activision Blizzard acquisition.
 
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