PlayStation’s Visual Arts and Malaysia studios have reportedly suffered ‘many’ layoffs
Visual Arts had previously seen a number of layoffs 18 months ago
Sony has laid off a number of developers at PlayStation’s Visual Arts studio and its Malaysian support studio, with a new report suggesting many staff are affected.
On Monday, former PlayStation Visual Arts project manager Abby LeMaster posted a message on LinkedIn stating that “many” people from the Visual Arts group had lost their job that day.
“It was tough waking up to messages that many friends and former coworkers from PSVA were laid off this morning,” said LeMaster, who now works at Riot Games. “The layoffs today hit hard. PSVA let go of developers with decades of subject matter expertise, talent that will be extraordinarily difficult to recoup. This industry can be unpredictable, but the skill, experience, and passion of the people I worked with at PSVA are undeniable.”
While LeMaster’s comments didn’t state how many people have been affected, a source familiar with the situation reportedly told Kotaku that the cuts are “widespread”, and that while some were related to recently cancelled projects – such as Bend Studio’s canned live service game – the layoffs reportedly went beyond that.
Located in San Diego, the Visual Arts studio supports Sony‘s other first-party studios with art, animation and technical assistance, and also collaborates with third-parties on games, movies and TV shows.
It was also reported by Nmia Gaming that layoffs have also taken place at the Kuala Lumpur-based PlayStation Studios Malaysia, which was founded in 2020 as a support studio to work alongside the Visual Arts team.
In a post on LinkedIn, PlayStation Studios Malaysia senior project manager Johann Mahfoor said he had been affected by the layoffs, stating: “It was a tough start of the week for us at PlayStation Studios Visual Arts. There was a wave of mass workforce reduction which affected Malaysia and our global counterparts, and unfortunately I’m no longer part of the brand.”
This is the latest in a series of layoffs being carried out by PlayStation in recent years, something that has been affecting the games industry as a whole. A year ago it was confirmed that Sony’s PlayStation department was laying off around 900 employees worldwide – around 8% of its entire workforce.
In January it was reported that Sony had cancelled a live service game being worked on by Bend, as well as another in development at Bluepoint Games.
