Sony has planned to lay off 900 employees from Playstation which is about 8% of its total workforce. The cuts will happen in studios all across the world, some of which will go through major structural change.
Its London Studio which worked on many prestigious projects such as World Soccer as a launch title for Playstation Portable, will be completely shut down. The exact reason behind this sudden layoff is unclear.
The goal is to streamline our resources to ensure our continued success and ability to deliver experiences gamers and creators have come to expect from us.Jim Ryan, Playstation CEO
The aforementioned email was also shared through a blog post that called the news sad and a difficult day for the company. Many industry experts, too, have expressed their disappointment over this news.
For example, the head of UK developer Lockwood Publishing, Halli Bjornsson, said that this is a challenging time for the industry and seeing the legendary London Sony Studio close is a huge deal.
The blog did not specify how the layoffs will be carried out and which region or department will get the most cuts.
However, on the flip side, the UK has a world-class gaming heritage, so with a little bit of nurturing, we can expect the gaming industry to bounce back, and that too, rather quickly.
Read More: Microsoft Signs Agreement to Keep Call of Duty on PlayStation
Why The Sudden LayOff?
Sony PlayStation isn’t the only one to cut jobs this year. Just a month before, Microsoft also decided to lay off 1,900 employees from its gaming division. It also included those who were originally a part of Activision-Blizzard— a company acquired by Microsoft.
The gaming industry has taken a massive hit recently. According to reports, more than 6,000 people have already lost their jobs this year.
Overall, since 2022, approximately 220+ companies, both big and small, have been involved in layoffs.
Glimpses of a troubled market were first noticed in 2022 when PlayTik laid off 600+ people and shut down three online gaming titles in the name of restructuring. Other companies like Perfect World Games and ByteDance have also laid off approximately 1000 employees each.
The common reason cited by most companies behind these layoffs is that they are “restructuring” or “streamlining” their workforce.
While that might be true, another big reason behind these layoffs could be the pandemic. During the pandemic, when people were confined to their homes, they spent a lot of time gaming which required these companies to heavily invest in their workforce and infrastructure to keep up with the demands.
However, now that we are back in the office and schools and colleges are running offline, the demand for online games has also shriveled down.
Just as tech companies (like Amazon and Google) had to lay off thousands of people post-pandemic, gaming companies like Sony are also forced to do the same. They no longer have enough work for all the people they have hired.
This isn’t the first time PlayStation has been hit by a layoff. In 2022, it laid off 90 North American employees. The sales and marketing department took most of the hit, with the entire retail marketing channel almost gone.
A LinkedIn post from a former PS employee suggests that there was another lay-off about 4 months ago but we didn’t find any official number on the number of job cuts.