Posted in: Games, Naughty Dog, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Video Games | Tagged: the last of us

The Last Of Us Developer Naughty Dog Reportedly Cutting Workers

According to reports, Naughty Dog have started cutting employee contracts early, and have been pressuring people to keep quiet about it.

Published Tue, 03 Oct 2023 09:12:07 -0500

by Gavin Sheehan

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Naughty Dog, the company behind major video games such as The Last Of Us and Uncharted, is reportedly cutting contracted employees today. According to a new report this morning from Kotaku, the company has actively been cutting contracted developers short on their deals. Apparently, the move was announced internally to several departments of the company, with the bulk of the layoffs happening in Quality Assurance, but it sounds as if almost every single department was hit with losses in some fashion or another.

Two different anonymous sources confirmed to the outlet that at least 25 contracted employees were let go; however, none of the full-time employees were impacted as of the time this report is being written. To make things just a little extra depressing and shady, those sources are also claiming that no severance is being offered to anyone they just laid off and that everyone else still with the company is being pressured to keep quiet about the news. Which is rather naive on their part, considering how many companies announced layoffs in the past week, that they actually thought people wouldn't leak that information to reporters.

Some are speculating this morning that the move is due in part to two specific items. The first was that Sony Interactive Entertainment recently shifted resources away from Naughty Dog, as they were working on a new multiplayer zombie game that, for some reason, was reviewed by Bungie (Destiny 2), who gave it a negative response. The project isn't canceled, but sources told Kotaku it's not really being worked on at this point. The second part is that co-president Evan Wells has announced he will retire at the end of the year, with creative director Neil Druckmann revealing there would be some restrictions at the company around the same time of Wells' announcement.

If the company moves forward with layoffs to its full-time staff, aside from the obvious anger people will probably have toward the company and SIE by proxy, it will definitely have an impact on whatever is being worked on internally. Which, more than likely, means the not-so-secret rumored work on The Last Of Us Part 3 is probably going to get impacted. We'll keep an eye out on this to see if more layoffs are coming.

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