Sony’s Playstation Laying Off 900 Workers, 8% Of Its Global Workforce

Sony’s Playstation is the latest video game company to announce significant layoffs this year and will let go 900 workers at Sony Interactive Entertainment, or about 8% of its global workforce.

In a staff email announcing the layoffs, outgoing Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan wrote:

We have made the extremely hard decision to announce our plan to commence a reduction of our overall headcount globally by about 8 percent or about 900 people, subject to local law and consultation processes. Employees across the globe, including our studios, are impacted.

Layoffs will impact employees in North America, EMEA, Japan, and APAC. U.S.-based workers will be updated on their job status today.

According to a blog post from Ryan, available here, Playstation’s London studio, which developed VR games for the Playstation console, will also be shut down.

Hermen Hulst, head of Playstation Studios, posted a blog entry of his own that included more specifics about the layoffs. In it, he named some of the company’s most successful labels that will be affected by the cuts, including Insomniac Games, maker of 2023’s mega-hit Spider-Man 2; Naughty Dog, developer of the hugely popular Last of Us franchise recently adapted as tv series; and Guerrilla, which develops the best-selling Horizon series.

Hulst also indicated that some games have been canceled as the company re-evaluates how it operates, but he didn’t name any titles. According to Hulst:

I want to be clear that the decision to stop work on these projects is not a reflection on the talent or passion of team members. Our philosophy has always been to allow creative experimentation. Sometimes, great ideas don’t become great games. Sometimes, a project is started with the best intentions before shifts within the market or industry result in a change of plan.

Tuesday’s layoffs come about two weeks after Sony announced it had missed a Playstation 5 sales target over the 2023 holiday period, contributing to a $10 billion drop in the company’s stock value.

It’s been a grim start to 2024 for the gaming industry, with many of the biggest developers laying off significant numbers of employees. In the first two months of this year, Microsoft let go 1,900 workers (8% of its workforce) at Xbox and Activision Blizzard, Unity Software laid off 1,800 (25%), Riot Games laid off 530 (11%), and Embracer Group laid off 97 (20%) at Eidos Montreal.

Follow the Animation Industry Layoff Tracker to keep track of companies in animation, vfx, and games that are downsizing.