Starting to think we aren’t getting any first party reveals![]()
The PlayStation-owned studio Visual Arts was hit with fresh layoffs this week amid a further restructuring of Sony’s U.S. game development operations. While some of the cuts included staff who had contributed to recently canceled projects like an upcoming live-service game at Bend Studio, a source told Kotaku the layoffs were more widespread than that.
Earlier this week, an unknown number of staff at the Visual Arts group based out of San Diego were informed that their last day at Sony would be March 7. The team provides internal art and technical support to first-party PlayStation studios and worked closely with Naughty Dog on the recent Last of Us Part 1 and 2 remasters among other projects.
“It was tough waking up to messages that many friends and former coworkers from PSVA were laid off this morning,” former PSVA project manager Abby LeMaster, now at Riot Games, posted on LinkedIn on Monday. “The layoffs today hit hard. PSVA let go of developers with decades of subject matter expertise; talent that will be extraordinarily difficult to recoup. This industry can be unpredictable, but the skill, experience, and passion of the people I worked with at PSVA are undeniable.”