Sony lays off unknown workers in PlayStation Visual Arts Studio

Sony has fired unknown people from its visual art studio in San Diego, as well as PS Studios in Malaysia, According to Kotaku report and testimony from former LinkedIn employees.

According to Kotaku, staff were told earlier this week that March 7 will be their last day, which includes developers who contribute to many different projects, such as Live service game recently canceled at Bend Studios. Visual Arts is an art and technical support studio that has worked with other first-party studios at PlayStation over the years, most notably the most recent Part 1 and Part 2 recreators.

IGN has identified many developers on LinkedIn, he says they have gotten rid of the visual arts, as well as developers from at least PS Studios in Malaysia. A former visual arts employee pointed out that the layoffs were “caused by multiple cancellations of projects.”

This is the second round of layoffs in Visual Arts over the past two years. Another wave has affected unknown individuals in 2023. It is unclear how many people remain in the visual arts, or what jobs the studio is doing. IGN has contacted PlayStation for comment.

Layouts help the ongoing trend of layoffs and project cancellations in the gaming industry, a report since 2023 It is estimated that more than 10,000 game developers have been fired. This number rises to More than 14,000 in 2024,exist The trend continues in 2025although the number is higher due to more studios rejecting reports of exact numbers affected.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior journalist at IGN. You can find her post on bluesky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Is there a story tip? Send it to [email protected].