PlayStation Lays Off More Developers

PlayStation has conducted another round of layoffs, this time impacting the Visual Arts team as well its Malaysian studios.

Several now-former employees of PlayStation have taken to LinkedIn to share that they've been let go. The roles include lighting, material, environmental, and animation artists. A Naughty Dog alumnus, who's now at Nvidia, said that those laid off were integral to the development of Uncharted and The Last of Us.

One of them was a senior project manager in Malaysia who worked on Concord and The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered. He said, "It was a tough start of the week for us at PlayStation Studios - Visual Arts. There was a wave of workforce reduction and unfortunately I'm no longer part of the brand."

According to Kotaku, those impacted were working on recently canceled projects such as the one from Days Gone developer Bend Studio. However, the cuts reportedly reached further than that and affected those who also worked on internal art and technical support for PlayStation's first-party studios.

PlayStation cut 900 jobs last year, as well as closed its London Studio. Over the last several years, PlayStation greenlit a live-service initiative that seemingly hasn't gone as well as planned. Naughty Dog canceled its multiplayer game set in The Last of Us universe, and Concord's high-profile failure led developer Firewalk Studios to completely shut down. PlayStation also reportedly shut down development on a live-service God of War game.