PlayStation's Visual Arts and Malaysia Teams Reportedly Hit With Layoffs - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 05 March 2025 / 5,671 Views
Sony has laid off a number of employees at PlayStation's Visual Arts studio and Malaysian support studio, according to a number of new reports.
Former PlayStation Visual Arts project manager Abby LeMaster did confirm the layoffs at the Visual Arts studio.
"It was tough waking up to messages that many friends and former coworkers from PSVA were laid off this morning," said LeMaster via LinkedIn.
LeMaster added, "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."
A source told Kotaku that the layoffs are "more widespread" than those that were supporting development on the now cancelled live service game from Bend Studio.
Nmia Gaming has also reported PlayStation Studios Malaysia, the support studio founded in 2020 to work with the Visual Arts teams, has also been hit with layoffs.
A number of sources stated various members of the Malaysian developer have been let go, mainly those working on the art team. The report states 17 to 18 people have been laid off.
PlayStation Studios Malaysia Senior Project Manager Johann Mahfoor in a post on LinkedIn has confirmed the layoffs.
"It was a tough start of the week for us at PlayStation Studios - Visual Arts," said Mahfoor. "There was a wave of workforce reduction and unfortunately I'm no longer part of the brand."
Sony in January 2025 cancelled two unannounced live service PlayStation games that were in development at Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Bluesky.
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In 2023 M$ laid off around 10,000 people. Last September M$ laid off 650 workers from Xbox, rising the laid of numbers to nearly 3,000 people just last year. Now people are saying "shame on you SONY" because SONY laid of 17 or 18 people? Get a life !!!
PlayStation is so busy getting Microsofts games they dont seem to be making that much themselves anymore. Cutting these jobs will probably increase share value, but it will not help bringing games to the market.
They released the game of the year last year and the winner of the best Multiplayer game and best ongoing game at the Game Awards.
That's pretty good for a company not making their own games anymore.
They only made Astro Bot themselves. The rest was made by third party studios.
This is a fake narrative. They own the Helldivers IP for example, and they were part of the game development for the entire duration, and funded it in totality.
By your definition games like Pokémon, Smash Brothers, Metroid, Kirby, Fire Emblem etc. wouldn’t count as Nintendo games as they’re all made by third parties. Last year Nintendo only released one game developed in house, a Mario Party game.
Well, pokemon is no nintendo game at all, gamefreak is independant. And how you know it is not a nintendo game ? Let's face it, i'm a huge pokemon fan but have you ever seen a nintendo game released with the technical issues all pokemon switch games had ? Never. Pokemon company is owned by nintendo, gamefreak and creatures, all having a third of it. Gamefreak is independant.
The other series you mentionned are nintendo own's ips, they are nintendo games, no matter whoever does them. Fzero gx was made by sega, yet is is a nintendo game.
So yes, helldivers 2 and astro bot both are sony games, much like dark cloud and demon souls are.
Well, considering how many studios they have and when these studios released their last game, no its not good.
Polyphony didn't get anything out since gt7 in 2022, same with santa monica with ragnarok in 2022, same with guerilla with forbidden west in 2022, same with insomniac with spider man 2 in 2023, same with naughty dog until they announced intergalactic, no game since 2020, bluepoint last game in 2020 with demon souls. Sucker punch, no game between ghost 1 in 2020 and yotei this year, bend with days gone in 2019. Should i continue ?
Yes, they did announce some games for this year and got helldivers 2 and astro in 2024... The last time a console manufacturer released so few games in 3 years... And they canceled games, so it's even more of their fault, you can't just give the excuse of games taking years to make. (And lots of those games are ps4 games too...)
Sony is just a stupid ego driven company. They outperformed with ps2, so let's do a 600 dollars ps3. It din't work that well, fine let's get back to work with ps4. Oh, we won with ps4, let's destroy that with ps5's void calendar and ps5 pro at 800 euros.
But since microsft already lost, will we get a renewal for ps6 or they'll continue screwing things up now that they won't fear anyone ? We'll either get a magical ps6 gen if it hurt them a bit or the worst gen ever if they can continue how they've been doing on ps5. Will you ever remember ps5 gen like you did with ps2 or ps4 ? I doubt it. Hell, even with ps3 they woke up in the middle to try to succeed. Ps5 gen is over, we'll get ps6 in like 2027 or 28, meaning any games bluepoint or bend will work on now are ps6 games or cross gen ps5/6 games, just to name these 2.
Media Molecule probably will skip PS5 and Firesprite only made a glorified tech demo for PSVR2 which is the only PSVR2 game Sony made themselves.
If you compare to the OG PSVR it's rather lackluster when it comes to Playstation supporting the device themselves.
Insomniac has been a blessing for Playstation this gen, especially now ND will most likely join the party quite late this time.
Insomniac could even do better though, they could release resistance collection, ratchet collection, anything. At least, we would think that we'll get some things before wolverine. But even though i'm not into ratchet since quest for booty and not in spiderman too, yes, they've been the only ones releasing more than one game this generation.
“ Polyphony didn't get anything out since gt7 in 2022, same with santa monica with ragnarok in 2022, same with guerilla with forbidden west in 2022, same with insomniac with spider man 2 in 2023, same with naughty dog until they announced intergalactic, no game since 2020, bluepoint last game in 2020 with demon souls. Sucker punch, no game between ghost 1 in 2020 and yotei this year, bend with days gone in 2019. Should i continue ?”
What planet are you living on? The average AAA video game takes like 5-6 years now and you’re talking about studios that made games 2 years ago, and one that released a game 18 months ago.
Well, considering ragnarok is 2018 and forbidden west is just like zero dawn, i might think that it can't take 5 years to make a dlc and sell it for 80 euros as a new game. Doing a lost legacy thing, you know. Plus, 2022 is 3 years from now, not 2.
These games i mentionned looked like 1.5 of their original game, don't tell me it'll take as many years to do a new game than to reuse what is done to make another one, otherwise fifa wouldn't release each year. And yes, it'll take more time to do a sequel than a fifa game, but let's face it... There are 4 years between 2018 and ragnarok... 2022 + 4... 2026... So where is next god of war announcement ? For a game we should expect in a year.
And in two years for Horizon, we don't even have announcements. Tell me what games are on schedule for a 2025-2028 release ? Answer is none except ghost 2 and intergalactic, plus death stranding 2 if you think it's a first party, from game developpers who did their last games in 2020 at best. The thing is, i don't want a release date for the next god of war, i want a trailer, a name, an announcement. Ragnarok is 3 years old now, even if you think it takes 5 years, where are the announcements for the sequel for a possible late 2026 release ?
Ragnarok isn't 3 years old, that's not how time works. Sony aren't announcing games years in advance, doesn't mean the games don't exist. Astro bot got announced summer 2024 and released September 2024.
You can't deny that we've never seen so few games to wait for than we have these years. And developpement time didn't increase that much for ps4 games (ragnarok and forbidden west are on ps4, so it's not even a question of technogical advancement, ragnarok is to 2018 what god of war 2 was to 1)
2 and a half for ragnarok, i give you that. But they don't begin pre prod of a game when the last one is released.
There is a compromise to make between announcing a game 3 weeks before its release and do a ff versus 13. As of now, we know one game from returnal's developper for 2026 and 2 for 2025, the year we're already in march of.
Marathon, Wolverine and Fairgame$ are all announced and would be expected before the end of 2026. Venom: Lethal Protector was aiming for a 2025 holiday release at the time of the Insomniac leak. The Horizon Multiplayer game has also been officially acknowledged and could well be out in that time.
Marathon is not cancelled ? I thought it was. As for the other two you first mentionned, we don't even have a trailer. As for the last two, do you really count them as "announced" ? If so, yes, i forgot about them, i reckon that.
Then again, unlike the 2025 games we're likely sure to get, ghost and intergalactic, we really know few things about them for supposed 2025/2026 release games.
What all did PlayStation release in 2024? 2023? 2022? 2021? I feel like every year has been extremely desolate…but maybe im just not remembering.
The first 2 years (including the launch) where pretty great. But lately it's been Xbox One level of 1st party releases.
2021: Returnal and Ratchet and Clank RA.
2022: GT7 and HFW, GOW ragna
2023: Spiderman 2 and Horizon Call of the Mountain
2024: Astro Bot
2025: Ghost of Yotei (probably)
counting only ps5 games or ones with a ps5 versions, so no tlou 2 for example and all remastered games already playable with ps4 version (and mlb each year)
2020 : Demon souls remake, miles morales
2021 : Returnal, ratchet
2022 : HFW, gt7, ragnarok
2023 : spiderman 2
2024 : astro bot
We're in mid-gen, we got 9 games and 2 announced ones (yotei and intergalactic)
Just for the sake of comparison with a technically close generation, ps4 (which 4 of the 9 games were released on, by the way) from ps4 solo era (13-19) (counting remasters because, you know, ps4 don't play ps3 games, unlike ps5 does fo ps4 ) :
2013 : killzone shadow fall
2014 : tlou remastered, infamous second son, first light,
2015 : uncharted collection, gravity rush remastered, tearaway unfold
2016 : ratchet, uncharted 4
2017 : HZD, lost legacy, gt sports
2018 : shadow of the colossus, spiderman, god of war
2019 : days gone
16, not counting mlb or any games from ps5 era in 2020 like ghost, tlou 2 or even the order or bloodborne and no vr game.
7 years vs 5 years, almost twice as much. And even if you erase the 3 remaster/collection, we're not even close... I wouldn't even try to compare with ps3 or ps2, it would be a shame for ps5 (and developpement length could be taken into account)
You're comparing 6 years vs. 4 years and you included 4 remasters and an expansion. It's clear you're incredibly biased.
According to this list, over 2013-2016 they only released 2 new games on PS4 and both were the worst games in their series and killed the series.
7 to 5 and yes, i've said that i've included remasters for a reason : We didn't need tlou 2 remaster to play tlou 2 on ps5, yet we needed the first one remaster to play it on ps4 as ps3 games won't work on ps4. Same as i would count gow hd collection as a ps3 game when it released.
I've counted all ps4 years versus all the years passed on ps5. But anyway, we can erase 3 remasters and add ghost and tlou, we're at minus 1.
Then if we include 2025 and 2026 from our point of view, we'll add 3 for ps5.
9 + 3 : 12. Up until 2026 as of now.
16-3 : 13 +2 : 15, not counting bloodborne, the order or vr games.
As for games killing their series, sony does it alone, there is no need for games to be bad. Have you seen a new tlou or a new uncharted ? And these games sold well and were good. One point i'll give you is that the two i mentionned just above are from the same developpers so they wouldn't be done at the same time anyway.
But the point is we're getting less games (bluepoint and bend's been cancelled, you may have seen that), plus we don't get many new games to wait for anyway.
The PS5 released November 2020, that’s less than 4 years and 4 months ago. 5 Years would include this entire year that’s not happened yet.
You can’t just add 3 games for the next 2 years, that’s literally just a random number.
That's the only games we know about for 2025 and 2026 as of now, from sony. It's not a random number. You know that yotei and intergalactic are 2025 games yet we're in March and we've yet to get a release date ?
Don't tell me you expect to see a surprise announcement in June for september or expect like 5 more sony games in 2025. I know that we'll get more games for 2026 and 2027 or 2028, but what do you expect for 2025 ? We're in March already and the games we know for 2025 were announced in 2024 (at the game awards for one, at the tgs for the other).
You know we're not getting much more than that from sony, except if you're counting death stranding 2 as first party and some "bloodborne" style game where sony owns the ip but not the studio. We should have had bluepoint and bend but their games were cancelled and since we don't have even the sign of a rumour of an announcement for either god of war "3" or horizon 3, what can you expect for 2025 ? As of now, we're only getting 2 sony games for 2025.
