Following yesterday’s news of mass PlayStation layoffs, details are emerging of how the redundancies impact individual first-party developers. According to two separate reports, Horizon and Killzone studio Guerrilla Games has lost 10% of its employees whereas Media Molecule narrowly escaped a full studio closure.
PlayStation layoffs hit developers by surprise
According to journalist Ethan Gach, he had heard from a source last December that Sony was considering closing down both London Studio as well as Media Molecule. The latter was speculated to be a candidate for closure after losing its co-founder and going through layoffs. However, it was London Studio that ended up on the chopping block — less than a week after outgoing boss Jim Ryan posed with its employees during a farewell gathering.
Gach says that none of the “dozens” of employees that he reached out to saw yesterday’s announcement coming, which was made by none other than Ryan himself.
Dutch news outlet AD.nl reports that Guerrilla Games has lost 10% of its workforce. Headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Guerrilla was acquired by Sony in 2005 and went on to produce the Killzone series. Killzone hasn’t seen a new entry since 2013 but Guerrilla found success with its Horizon series.
Guerrilla Games has (or had) two Horizon projects in the pipeline, one of which is an online game. It’s unclear if they are among the games Sony has canceled or not.
