Sony has made an unknown but seemingly large number of job cuts to the PlayStation division. The layoffs are reportedly centered around PlayStation’s Visual Arts Group and Malaysia Studio, both of which are support teams lending a hand to the brand’s core game development studios.

Back in February 2024, Sony announced major layoffs affecting approximately 900 PlayStation employees, which accounted for around 8 percent of the gaming giant’s entire workforce back then. Later in the year, Sony closed mobile game developer Neon Koi and Concord developer Firewalk Studios, and in January 2025, the company canceled two upcoming PlayStation live-service games from first-party teams Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games. While Sony affirmed that these studios are safe from closure, it seems the game cancelations might have set off an unfortunate ripple effect for PlayStation’s support teams.

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Former PlayStation Visual Arts project manager Abby LeMaster made a LinkedIn post on Monday stating that several developers from the San Diego-based support studio lost their jobs that day. LeMaster said that the layoffs “hit hard,” apparently letting go of developers with “decades” of expertise and talent that will be “extraordinarily difficult to recoup.” A new report from Kotaku further investigated the PlayStation Visual Arts layoffs, claiming that they were “widespread” and that some of the impacted developers were affiliated with recently-canceled projects like Bend Studios’ live-service game. However, the Visual Arts job cuts apparently stretched beyond that, likely alluding to a broader downsizing effort.

Two PlayStation Support Studios Impacted by Layoffs

It unfortunately doesn’t end there, as PlayStation’s Studio Malaysia support team, which was established in 2020, has also been affected by the recent wave of layoffs. PlayStation Studio Malaysia senior project manager Johann Mahfoor recently confirmed on LinkedIn that he was among those who were let go, calling it a “mass workforce reduction” that affected both Malaysia and other global PlayStation teams. At one point, Studio Malaysia was rumored to be helping with Bluepoint’s now-canceled game, which could explain why the support team was part of the recent job cuts.

2024 was an extremely tough year for the games industry, with over 14,500 layoffs across studios and publishers worldwide. Combined with the layoffs in 2022 and 2023, the number stands at over 33,500 job cuts in just three years. The primary reason behind the aggressive spike in layoffs in recent years is a re-adjustment of financial expectations after the pandemic boom, where consumer spending significantly increased and companies incorrectly predicted the pattern to hold up in subsequent years. Sadly, it seems the trend of job cuts may very well continue in 2025, with major companies like Warner Bros. Games having shut down three studios most recently.