Rumors from one studio and official information from two other Sony teams.

Insider Gaming has reported, based on anonymous sources, that Ballistic Moon, the team behind Until Dawn Remake, has essentially been shut down. By September, nearly forty people had been laid off just before the game’s release, and those who remained were focused on post-October support. Only in December, more people were let go (about 20), and supposedly only the founders were left with a very small staff. The PR, development and marketing departments were also closed.

Compared to the original, the remake was not outstanding. Many people criticized the changes made to the characters, the filters and the colors (the latter were also changed), but the soundtrack was better, the sense of dread was increased, there were new endings and the narrative was expanded, but still the average press rating on Metacritic was 70/100 and the average user rating was 6.5/10.

No one knows what is really happening with Ballistic Moon, where they have been looking for funding for new projects, but have not even found a new publisher for the new IP. According to a source at Insider Gaming, Sony said it would provide funding for updates to Until Dawn Remake, but that probably didn’t happen either. The working conditions were supposedly good, as they had a positive opinion of the studio’s team, but instead of unpaid overtime (which one ex-employee said was several weeks of unpaid work), they were fired.

Kotaku has reported that tomorrow, March 7th, will be the last day of work for several employees of Visual Arts’ in-house first-party studio. There are rumors of widespread layoffs, and some of them include people who previously worked on Bend Studios’ canceled Live Service game. There are also rumors of layoffs at PlayStation Studios Malaysia, with former senior project manager Johan Affendy posting on LinkedIn. For him, the saddest part was that high performing, important people who were actively working on the projects lost their jobs.

PlayStation Studios Malaysia was established in 2020 to help alongside Visual Arts. The latter can help other in-house studios with art and technical elements, and most recently worked on remasters of The Last of Us Part 1 and Part 2. Chris Clyde and Lewis Labram, two of the affected employees, confirmed their layoffs on LinkedIn. Abby MeLMaster, a former project manager at Visual Arts (she’s now a senior executive producer of research and development at Riot Games), shared her feelings on Monday:

“It was hard to wake up this morning to news that many friends and former colleagues at PlayStation Visual Arts (PSVA) had been laid off. Today’s layoffs hit hard. PSVA has let go of developers with decades of experience; talent that will be extremely difficult to replace. This industry can be unpredictable, but the skill, experience and passion of the people I worked with at PSVA is undeniable,” LeMaster wrote.

Sony’s situation is not rosy…

Source: WCCFTech