Reportedly, developer Naughty Dog is cutting down on some of its contracted staff. The studio owned by Sony is refusing to renew the contracts of around 25 temporary workers from numerous departments.
Among them, the quality assurance staff was the most affected department. However, the full-time staff were not impacted by the layoff.
Naughty Dog is one of the most acclaimed studios under Sony’s first-party banner. The studio has some popular platform-exclusive titles such as The Last of Us and the Uncharted series. Back in January this year, a live-action version of The Last of Us made its debut on HBO.
It even received a lot of critical and social praise, however, after the recent layoff it seems like the popularity was not enough to support continued development on its Last of Us multiplayer project.
The Layoffs were communicated internally to the employees at the Santa Monica. The California-based fired at least 25 developers as part of the downsizing. As of July 400, Naughty Dog’s employee strength was reported to be 400.
When will Last of Us multiplayer release?
Bloomberg had also reported earlier this year that the development of Last of Us had “slowed down” because of a poor internal review from Bungie. Back then Sony had recently acquired Bungie Studios, which is known for making successful, live-service multiplayer games, such as Destiny 2.
— Naughty Dog (@Naughty_Dog) May 26, 2023
In addition, the Kotaku report on layoff also suggests that although the development hasn’t been scrapped yet, it is currently “on ice.”
The year 2023 has been a great one for games however an unfortunate one for the people who work behind the games. Several studios have been affected by massive and fatal layoffs although the industry has been recording profits and a number of blockbuster games are still on the cards for the remaining months.
Recently there has been a lot of sentiment favoring unionization that can help shield workers from corporate abuses as well as support them when such inevitable layoffs take place.
Unfortunately, Naughty Dog is not offering severance pay to the impacted contract workers. Notably, this is one of the protections unionization helps with.
These layoffs at Naughty Dog come just a few months post the studio co-president Evan Wells announced that he would retire at the end of 2023 after working with the Studio for 19 years.
At the same time, Neil Druckmann, the creative director and lead co-writer of Naught Dog’s recent titles including Uncharted and The Last of Us, and a significant contributor to the HBO show, had revealed that the studio leadership was going through restructuring.