After news broke this week of Sony laying off around 900 staff across its global collection of PlayStation Studios, we started to learn some of the impact it would have on development teams that have become household names and creators of hugely-successful games and franchises. The sweeping cuts not only saw the shuttering of London Studio and reported cancellations of projects at teams like Firesprite but have even reached seemingly-infallible studios like Insomniac, Naughty Dog and Guerrilla – with the latter apparently losing up to 10% of its workforce.
In the wake, Insomniac Games – developers of PlayStation’s fastest selling game to date, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 – has issued a statement on social media addressing the outcome and giving a solemn farewell to the talent it’s losing.
“Like several other teams across SIE and PlayStation Studios, Insomniac Games was impacted by yesterday’s layoffs. There are no sufficient words to express our feelings about it. This is a solemn and unprecedented moment for our studio,” the statement reads.
“We are focusing our energy on helping everyone affected through this challenging time. For those who are hiring, there are great people seeking new roles who made important contributions to Insomniac’s history. We’re extremely grateful for them and they will be missed.”
— Insomniac Games (@insomniacgames) February 28, 2024
Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan shared the disappointing news of the company’s decision to fire around 8% of its global workforce earlier this week, saying, “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.
“These are incredibly talented people who have been part of our success, and we are very grateful for their contributions. However, the industry has changed immensely, and we need to future ready ourselves to set the business up for what lies ahead. We need to deliver on expectations from developers and gamers and continue to propel future technology in gaming, so we took a step back to ensure we are set up to continue bringing the best gaming experiences to the community.”
