PlayStation's Visual Arts studio hit with layoffs
Former employees have shared the news on social media
PlayStation support studio Visual Arts has been hit with another round of layoffs, with several former employees sharing on social media last week that they have been let go.
"Unfortunately, following a wave of layoffs, last week was my last at PlayStation," former senior level designer at Visual Arts Daniel Bellemare wrote on LinkedIn.
Senior technical recruiter Matt Barney shared a similar update on LinkedIn, adding that he "knew this layoff was coming" and wished those impacted "the best of luck" in their future endeavours.
Rigging artist Sean Teo posted to social media that their contract had come to an end as well, but as noted by VGC, did not indicate whether this was related to the layoffs.
It's unclear how many staff have been impacted by the redundancies at this stage. GamesIndustry.biz has reached out to Sony for more information.
A first wave of layoffs took place at Visual Arts in May, according to former project coordinator John Borba, who wrote on LinkedIn that there was "restructuring within the studio" then, and that he was "among the people let go to support budgetary needs."
Visual Arts was launched in 2007 and is known for working as a support studio on The Last of Us, Uncharted, and Spider-Man.
Earlier this month, Naughty Dog laid off at least 25 developers in its contractor workforce – mainly from the QA team.
In May, Sony shut down PixelOpus, the studio behind Concrete Genie and Entwined, as part of a "review process."
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