‘The Last Of Us’ developer is the latest studio to be hit with layoffs

Naughty Dog, the developer of The Last Of Us and the Uncharted series, has allegedly cut a number of employee contracts short as part of a downsizing plan.

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Kotaku reported that two sources contacted the publication about the layoffs that have hit a range of divisions, from art, production and quality assurance.

Full-time Naughty Dog employees and developers appeared to have not been included in these cuts and they alleged that “at least 25 developers” have been affected.

Apparently those impacted will be asked to work throughout October as their contracts will be officially terminated at the end of this month. Moreover, Kotaku‘s sources claimed that employees are feeling “pressured” to not allow this news to reach the public.

Lastly, there is no severance on the table for the 25 developers that will no longer work for Naughty Dog. Sony did not offer a comment when contacted by Kotaku and there has been no statement from the developer nor publisher at the time of writing.

This year has seen an unprecedented surge in studio layoffs in spite of successes from some of the major players. Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson announced that the company had “a record Q1” for the 2024 financial year with a 21 per cent year-on-year increase in net bookings.

However, Immortals Of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios was forced to lose nearly half of its employees in layoffs. Ascendant Studios is owned by Electronic Arts and is formed of individuals who have worked on Call Of Duty and Dead Space.

Team17 is also allegedly staring down “tens of redundancies” this month per an internal letter to its employees.

“As explained in today’s announcement, we have just communicated our half year results showing strong growth for the Group in the first half of the year,” said group CEO Ann Hurley to staff.

“However, we recognise these results were against the backdrop of one of the most competitive years for high quality launches and deep peer discounting that the industry has ever seen,” she continued.

In other gaming news, Nvidia’s French offices were raided by police as part of a wider investigation into anti-trust allegations.

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