Howdy gamers, welcome to today’s coverage of layoffs in the gaming industry. With era-defining titles like Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Spider-Man 2 all releasing this year, we’ve not been able to give the rampant, heinous mass layoffs and firings within the industry as much attention as we’d like around here. As such, we’ve been reduced to spinning this wheel we keep in the office to see what gets the limited coverage we’re allotted on the issue. Okay everyone, here’s the saddest part of my week, are you ready? Let’s Spin! That! Wheel!
WHOOOOOOOOOSH
It’s Sony! Sony is the winner!
Specifically, it appears that Sony’s Visual Arts Service Group are the unfortunate recipients of this week’s spotlight. The internal division of Sony apparently won’t be kept fully intact to celebrate the success of Spider-Man 2, which was just crowned the fastest selling first-party game of all time after its release Friday, just three days before the lay-offs were announced. It would appear that the game’s runaway success just wasn’t the ‘fastest selling first-party Sony game of all time’ enough to keep the team together. What a crazy industry!
Sony hasn’t released an official statement, but after a number of VASG employees posted of their own individual layoffs on social media, the conclusion became somewhat of an assumption.
“I thought it was weird how they had us turn everything in after we finished up for the weekend,” said one recently laid-off developer. “They said they were spraying for earwigs, but now I know the truth. I thought it was weird, ’cause I’ve never seen an earwig in the building before, but I wasn’t about to hassle the earwig guy, you know?”
Sadly, since the wheel landed on Sony, we won’t be able to give the proper press coverage to the recent layoffs at Epic (developer of the wildly popular Fortnite), Roblox (which grossed over two billion dollars last year), EA (seven billion!), Microsoft (just finalized 68 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard), or any of the other dozens that have happened this year. Check this space next week, where I spin the wheel again and let you know more depressing details about the withering state of whatever’s left in this cold, withering media landscape.
If we’re still in business, I mean!
