Today, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Bend Studio of Days Gone fame announced that its employees have been affected by layoffs.
The studio made the announcement on its official X (formerly Twitter) account.
The message mentions that the layoffs happened in the process of transitioning to the studio’s next project. No further information was officially provided about the layoffs or about said project.
You can read it in its entirety below.
“Today, we said goodbye to some incredibly talented teammates as we transition to our next project.
We’re deeply thankful for their contributions as they’ve shaped who we are, and their impact will always be part of our story.This is a difficult moment for our team, but we hold immense respect for everyone who got us here. As we move forward, we remain committed to building the future of Bend Studio with creativity, passion, and innovation in the titles we craft.”
This comes less than a month from the release on PC of Bend Studio’s latest game, Days Gone, which currently enjoys “Very Positive” reviews on Steam.
If you’re not familiar with Bend Studio, it’s one of Sony’s most storied developers, known for developing the beloved Syphon Filter franchise.
Before Days Gone, the studio had a stint developing portable versions of PlayStation’s blockbuster franchises, including Resistance: Retribution for the PSP and Uncharted: Golden Abyss for PlayStation Vita.
The past two years have been particularly hard for the gaming industry, with many studios reducing their workforce radically or even closing. Sony’s own studios have been affected as well by layoffs and closures, especially due to the cancellation of several projects part of a broader initiative to create a large number of live service games.
While that initiative has found some success with titles like Helldivers 2, it has certainly proved to be a poisoned apple for other studios, and at the moment, Sony appears to be scaling it back considerably.
We’ll have to wait and see what Bend Studio’s next game will be, but considering that the transition just happened, it’ll probably be a while before we hear more.
