It seems that video game studios are cutting down on staff as Naughty Dog joins the club. Known for game franchises like The Last of Us and Uncharted, the firm plans to lay off dozens of contracted developers on its team.
Naughty Dog's Workforce Reduction
The studio behind the famous title The Last of Us Part II intends to cut off at least 25 developers, according to sources who have heard about the internally communicated layoffs at the studio in Santa Monica, California.
The dozens of workers affected were said to be contracted workers, most of whom are within the quality assurance testing department. Other impacted departments include art production, as reported by Kotaku. Currently, the actual number of affected employees is still unknown
It was stated that full-time employees would not be a part of the downsizing efforts of the studio. The last known number of employees in Naughty Dog is 400, which means that more than 6% of the overall staff will be removed from the team.
Reports say that the employees within the studio under PlayStation were pressured to keep the news under wraps. To make things worse, the staffers who are waiting to be laid off will not be getting severance packages from the company.
Given that they are still bound by a contract, they will be obligated to work until it is terminated, which won't be until the end of October. It's unclear why the company is conducting job cuts, but there is speculation that it was due to Sony taking away resources from the studio.
Naughty Dog is just the recent studio implement layoffs. Other video game developers have done the same and even had more job cuts such as Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Embracer, and just before the news about the Uncharted developer, Epic Games.
Epic Games Has a Bigger Number in Mind
With a ballpark number of at least 25 employees, Naughty Dog is still far from the layoffs that Epic Games has conducted. Approximately 830 employees lost their jobs in the studio, which makes up about 16% of the company's total workforce.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says that the job cuts were due to the company "spending way more money" than they earn. Unapologetically, the chief executive expressed that his optimism about spending as much without resulting in a workforce reduction was "unrealistic."
Seeing as the company still ended up "far short of financial sustainability" even after moving to net zero hiring and cutting operating spend on marketing events, Epic Games believed that the next logical step was to lay off staff, as reported by Tech Crunch.
Due to the drastic change, some of the products might not ship as planned because of the company being "under-resourced for the time being." Two-thirds of the layoffs were outside of core development, so certain products and initiatives will still stay on track.
Mostly, the company will be focusing on its biggest product, Fortnite. Fans of the game can rest easy when it comes to the release of the upcoming season, as well as Fortnite Chapter 5, Del Mar, Sparks, and Juno.
