Visual Arts, a PlayStation support firm, has gone through another round of layoffs, with some former employees sharing their news on social media last week.
“Unfortunately, following a wave of layoffs, last week was my last at PlayStation,” Daniel Bellemare, a former senior-level designer at Visual Arts, said on LinkedIn.
On LinkedIn, senior technical recruiter Matt Barney posted a similar update, saying he “knew this layoff was coming” and wishing those affected “the best of luck” in their future endeavors.
Rigging artist Sean Teo announced on social media that their contract had expired as well but did not specify whether this was related to the layoffs.
At this point, it’s unclear how many employees have been laid off. GamesIndustry.biz has contacted Sony for additional information.
According to former Visual Arts project coordinator John Borba, there was “restructuring within the studio” in May, and he was “among the people let go to support budgetary needs.”
Visual Arts was founded in 2007 and is most known for its work on The Last of Us, Uncharted, and Spider-Man. Naughty Dog let off at least 25 engineers in its contractor staff earlier this month, primarily from the QA team. Sony closed PixelOpus, the studio behind Concrete Genie and Entwined, in May as part of a “review process.”
Media Molecule Joins Layoff Trend
It was announced today that Media Molecule, Sony’s first-party studio that most recently produced Dreams, will be laid off.
According to GLHF, which cites sources, roughly 20 employees would be laid off. Media Molecule now employs approximately 135 people, implying that it will be eliminating about 15% of its workforce. Staff were apparently informed of the news during a meeting today. Sony and Media Molecule have yet to respond to the report formally.
It’s incredibly awful news, and it follows a trend of layoffs in the business. Redundancies have been reported in the last month or so, ranging from major publishers to tiny companies. Epic Games, Team 17, and Telltale Games, to name a few, are laying off employees. Sony’s Visual Arts division, as well as Media Molecule, have joined the list.
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After the success of LittleBigPlanet, Sony bought Media Molecule, and the team went on to create some of the platform’s most beloved and original exclusives.
Dreams expands on the concept of the studio’s debut game, which took nearly a decade to complete due to its complexity. Despite being highly original and very good at what it sets out to do, the game did not gain widespread success, prompting the decision to halt post-launch development and move on to a new project.
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