Coming on the heels of a large number of layoffs across the industry, it appears that Naughty Dog is laying off several employees. This comes in conjunction with the news that the Last of Us Multiplayer/Live Service game is currently ‘on ice’. This is just the latest in what has been a tumultuous development cycle.
Naughty Dog, which is home to around 400 developers, will be laying off 25 employees from the company according to a report from Kotaku. According to this report, these layoffs are set to impact the company’s QA department with full-time employees to be unaffected. Additionally, Naughty Dog is not expected to offer severance to these employees, who are expected to work through till the end of October. Employees are also “being pressured to keep the news quiet”.
The Last of Us multiplayer project is also “basically on ice,” though it has been clarified it is “completely canceled.” This comes on the heels of reports from Bloomberg in May suggesting the quality of the project had come into question, and a small team remained on the project while it was reevaluated. At the time Naughty Dog issued a response, stating:
We know many of you have been looking forward to hearing more about our The Last of Us multiplayer game. We’re incredibly proud of the job our studio has done thus far, but as development has continued, we’ve realized what is best for the game is to give it more time.
Our team will continue to work on the project, as well as our other games in development, including a brand new single-player experience; we look forward to sharing more soon. We’re grateful to our fantastic community for your support —- thank you for your passion for our games, it continues to drive us.
This also tracks with a recent report from Jason Schrier of Bloomberg, stating that several first-party studios at Sony have been upset with the focus on Live Service titles that CEO Jim Ryan had pushed for. Many of these studios, such as Naughty Dog, have largely spent their time on story-focused and narrative-driven games, finding that they are now expected to deliver on games they are not well versed in. The acquisition of Bungie by Sony was meant to help facilitate this transition but has yet to lead to any full results.
In September Jim Ryan announced that he would be stepping down as CEO, something that many PlayStation fans rejoiced to hear. It remains unclear just yet who will replace him, or if they will reverse his moves to put emphasis on live service titles at PlayStation.
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