Sony Santa Monica Confirms Layoffs, Project Cancellation

Sony Santa Monica has confirmed that they have laid off a large number of employees, although they did not provide any numbers. There is also one upcoming project in the studio that has been cancelled.

In a public statement, SCEA explains that the decision was the “result of a cycle of resource re-alignment against priority growth areas.” They affirm that they do not make these decisions hastily or frivolously, but have found it necessary.

If one looks at the Santa Monica Studio website, they can confirm that Hohokum, Everybody’s Gone Toe The Rapture, and The Order: 1886 are still featured, so neither of these games were cancelled. It seems to be an unannounced project that required a significant number of Santa Monica’s employees. You can see a tweet from the Playstation account alluding to the unannounced title last year below.

Fun fact: @SonySantaMonica Studio, @MediaMolecule, @NaughtyDog are working on unannounced PS4 titles

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) August 20, 2013

Santa Monica explained they were hiring when they announced their move to Playa Vista, and now we can also confirm the studio is looking for even more employees, in both senior and starting positions. Their need also encompasses several fields, including production, art, design, and programming. It seems like an entire internal studio was let go. As for the unannounced cancelled project, we can only guess what it is.

Phil Spencer has confirmed that they are seeking out developers from Sony Santa Monica, as well as Irrational Games, and told a fan to spread the #helpDEVS tag so that they can find and contact them. We wish all these developers the best of luck.

Image is from Hohokum.

@GGhalid Like the #helpDEVS tag. Keep that one going. We've reached out and are engaged in hiring.

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) February 26, 2014

Source: http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/20583/article/sony-santa-monica-confirms-layoffs-project-cancellation/

In a matter of week MS is coupling veterans from Irrational Studios and Sony Santa Monica to the already All-Star team at Black Tusk (apparently). What future reserves to games at newly built studios?

I would not read too much into it. Although, It's nice that these guys will be able to get back on their feet, even if they are not with sony. If MS manage to hire a few, good news for them.

Yeah but MS has been pretty agressive at snatching talents from renowned studios.

Nice play on words!

I would have said good for the staff as they wont be out of work now. Don't think they really care which userbase likes or dislikes this.

Translation: Sony, despite selling the most consoles at a loss, is running out of money.
Microsoft, despite selling less consoles also at a loss, has tons of it.
Soon, all the people praising Sony's first-party devs will talk about how crappy those same devs
are now that they work for MS.

There's actually two hiring.

SSM fired a whole division, and is now looking for replacements.

So Blacktusk is getting the devs Sony Santa Monica didn't want.

Good for them.

Some people pretty desperate for any sort of win right now.

Who, the Sony fans trying to pretend it doesn't matter that Sony is forced to shutter one of their biggest first party developers because they're broke as f**k?

Moderated,

-Mr Khan

If SSM were operating at a profit there is no way Sony would shut them down. Plenty of other ways to cut costs before losing anything making a profit.