Visual Arts Studio under fire: PlayStation lays off developers - report

Visual Arts studio, owned by PlayStation, faced new employee layoffs this week amid Sony's restructuring operations in the US. This is reported by Kotaku, writes UNN.

Details 

As noted, employees of the visual arts group in San Diego were informed that their last working day at Sony would be March 7. This team provided internal artistic and technical support for third-party PlayStation studios, including collaborating with Naughty Dog on the remasters of The Last of Us Part 1 and 2.

"It was hard to wake up and receive messages that many friends and former colleagues from PSVA were laid off this morning," wrote former PSVA project manager Abby LeMaster on LinkedIn on Monday, who now works at Riot Games. "Today's layoffs hit hard. PSVA laid off developers with decades of subject matter expertise; talent that will be extremely difficult to replace. This industry can be unpredictable, but the skill, experience, and passion of the people I worked with at PSVA are undeniable."

The layoffs occurred after an expensive failure in last year's Concord, new rounds of cancellations of live service projects, including the reported spin-off of God of War at BluePoint Games, and a reorganization at the upper echelons of Sony's management. In January, Hiroki Totoki became the new CEO of the company, and Hideo Nakano became the sole CEO of PlayStation, while Hermen Hulst, who was previously co-CEO, reported to him as the current head of PlayStation Studios.

Reminder

Earlier, it was reported that a Dutch organization filed a class-action lawsuit against Sony on behalf of about 3 million PlayStation users. In particular, it was alleged that the company abuses its dominant position in the market, forcing buyers to overpay for games and in-game content.