Sony has laid off an unknown quantity of people from its San Diego-based Visual Arts studio in addition to PS Studios Malaysia, according to a Kotaku report and testimonies from former staff on LinkedIn.
Per Kotaku, workers have been knowledgeable earlier this week that March 7 can be their final day, and included builders who had contributed to a quantity of completely different initiatives, corresponding to a recent canceled live-service game at Bend Studio. Visual Arts is an artwork and technical assist studio that has labored through the years with PlayStation’s different first-party studios, most notably the current The Final of Us Half 1 and a pair of remasters.
IGN has recognized a quantity of builders on LinkedIn saying they’d been laid off from Visual Arts, in addition to at least one from PS Studios Malaysia. One former Visual Arts worker famous that the layoffs have been “on account of a number of mission cancellations.”
That is the second spherical of layoffs at Visual Arts within the final two years, after another wave impacting an unknown number of individuals in 2023. It’s unclear how many individuals stay at Visual Arts or what the studio is engaged on now. IGN has reached out to PlayStation for remark.
The layoffs contribute to an ongoing pattern of video games trade layoffs and mission cancellations that is been reported on since 2023, when it was estimated that over 10,000 game developers were laid off. That quantity rose to over 14,000 in 2024, and in 2025 the trend has continued, albeit with far hazier numbers on account of extra studios declining to report the precise quantity impacted.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You could find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Acquired a narrative tip? Ship it to rvalentine@ign.com.