The Last of Us and Uncharted maker Naughty Dog is reportedly laying off at least 25 employees, as The Last of Us multiplayer game faces ongoing difficulties. The news comes from two unnamed sources familiar with the situation, who told Kotaku the layoffs affect quality assurance workers the most, though they also include employees in the art and production departments.
Kotaku’s sources say that all the affected employees are contract workers. They will receive no severance pay and are expected to work until the end of October, and Naughty Dog reportedly forbade them and full-time employees from publicly discussing the layoffs. Whether Sony plans to make an official announcement remains to be seen.
The layoffs may stem from ongoing problems with The Last of Us multiplayer spinoff. Naughty Dog publicly delayed the game in summer 2023, and Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier said that Sony quietly moved resources away from the project. That decision reportedly came after a negative internal assessment from Destiny 2 maker Bungie, which Sony acquired in 2022 to help lead its live-service game initiative. Now, Kotaku’s sources say that game is “basically on ice,” and Naughty Dog has made no further announcements about development progress since the project’s earlier delay.
Naughty Dog’s layoffs are just the latest in a stream of redundancies across the games industry. Fortnite maker Epic Games laid off nearly 1,000 employees after shifting toward a creator-focused structure, Blizzard cut jobs on the Hearthstone team, and Ubisoft quietly laid off a small number of workers as well. Indie publisher Team17 also fired most of its quality assurance department, and the company CEO announced their departure.
Meanwhile, data from research group Circana shows that the video game industry generated over $4 billion in revenue in August 2023 alone.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
