According to a new report by Kotaku whom cites two sources familiar with the situation, The Last of Us developer and Sony owned studio, Naughty Dog, has let go at least 25 contract workers. These lay offs were mostly focused on the quality assurance team with a few layoffs happening to contract workers in the art department and production.
Kotaku's sources say that at least 25 developers were laid off as part of Naughty Dog's downsizing efforts. Those impacted by the layoffs are not officially terminated until the end of October. They will be expected to work through the rest of the month knowing that they will not have a job in just a few weeks. For now, full-time employees have not been a part of the cuts.
Perhaps the most damning element to this story is the fact that no severance is being offered to those that were laid off. Furthermore, remaining employees are "being pressured to keep the news quiet."
The layoffs at Naughty Dog are just the latest of a long strong of layoffs to hit the gaming industry this year alone. 343 Industries was hit hard by layoffs in January. EA first laid off several Apex Legends QA testers then an additional 6% of its workforce. CD Projekt RED laid off about 100 in July, Embracer Group laid off numerous employees and straight up shut down several studios in recent months, including Volition. BioWare let go of about 50 employees. More recently was the news that 16% of Epic Games was laid off.
As Kotaku notes in their reporting, Sony recently announced that they sold a record-breaking 25 million PlayStation 5 units in its current fiscal year.
