Sony has reportedly laid off an unspecified number of employees from its San Diego-based Visual Arts studio and PS Studios Malaysia. This news comes from a Kotaku report and confirmed by former employees on LinkedIn. Affected staff were informed earlier this week that March 7th would be their last day. The layoffs included developers who worked on various projects, including a recently canceled live-service game at Bend Studio.

Visual Arts, an art and technical support studio, has collaborated extensively with PlayStation's first-party studios, notably contributing to the recent The Last of Us Part I and Part II remasters. IGN has independently verified the layoffs through LinkedIn posts from several former Visual Arts employees and at least one from PS Studios Malaysia. One former Visual Arts employee attributed the layoffs to "multiple project cancellations."

This marks the second round of layoffs at Visual Arts in the past two years, following an earlier, undisclosed number of job cuts in 2023. The current size of the Visual Arts team and their ongoing projects remain unclear. IGN has contacted PlayStation for comment.

These layoffs reflect a broader trend of job cuts and project cancellations within the games industry, a trend observed since 2023. While estimates of over 10,000 layoffs in 2023 and over 14,000 in 2024 are available, precise figures for 2025 are less readily available due to decreased transparency from affected studios.