ony PlayStation was revealed to be undergoing a new round of layoffs.

A few days ago, Ryan Jewell, an environmental artist who has worked in Sony for more than nine years, disclosed the fact that he was fired on LinkedIn and revealed that it was part of the company's layoff plan, although Sony has not officially announced it.

Coincidentally, Grummz, the former head of the World of Warcraft team, also said in a media interview that because of the failure of the "Star Attack" game, its development team, Firewalk Studio, may be rectified or even disbanded by Sony.

Grummz said Firewalk Studio, the developer of "Screaming Attack," which Sony bought in April, is in trouble. Sony is currently buying back all the materials related to "Star Attack", which may signal that Sony will end the development and operation of this game.

At the same time, Sony may also reassign Firewalk's employees to serve other projects within the company. Grummz criticized the situation, arguing that the DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) policy led to a failure in the game's character design, further slowing down the performance of the hero shooter and ultimately creating a major flaw in the product.

Due to the news revealed by Ryan Jewell and Grummz, there is a lot of speculation about the future development direction of Sony. There is an opinion that "Star Attack" exposes serious problems with Sony's current internal product pipeline.

"Star Attack" is a 5v5 first-person shooter game developed by Sony's first-party studio Firewalk Studio over the course of 8 years, which was released on August 24 this year, and the game has been mediocre since its launch. Player ratings are also not satisfactory, with a large number of gamers openly criticizing the game's core gameplay, character setting, and even plot.

Under the guidance of these players and media opinion, Firewalk Studios removed the game from all platforms on September 6, citing that the game's performance after its release did not meet expectations and needed to be adjusted in order to return.

In the announcement, Firewalk Studios said that while many of the features of Starstorm resonated with players, other aspects of the game, as well as the launch situation, were not as successful as expected. So, they decided to take the game offline and refund all players. After Starring Attack goes offline, Firewalk Studios will continue to explore the potential possibilities, including those that will "better reach our players."

Despite Firewalk Studios' overhauls, Sony doesn't seem to have given much time to improve, and judging from the information revealed by Ryan Jewell and Grummz above, Sony may be holding Firewalk Studios accountable for the failure of "Starlight Attack".

If Sony's layoff plan is being implemented, employees related to the "Star Attack" project may also be at risk of losing their jobs. And this is not the first time Sony has laid off employees this year. In July of this year, Sony had a similar layoff plan. At that time, Sony laid off more than 220 employees at its first-party studio, Bungie, the developer of the Destiny franchise, or about 17 percent of its workforce.

At the time, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons also said that the company wanted to focus its resources on Destiny and Marathon due to factors such as the cost of game development, the economic downturn, and the industry downturn, and that layoffs were a difficult but "necessary" decision.

This year, there have been many layoffs in the overseas game market. According to The Obsidian tracker, the number of layoffs in the gaming industry has reached 10,100 in 2024, compared to 10,500 in 2023, and in less than half a year, the number of layoffs in the gaming industry has already exceeded that of all of last year.

It can be seen that the harsh environment of the overseas game market also makes game companies more cautious about the approval of new projects, the investment of project resources under research, and the follow-up planning of launched games, and they all hope that the company can maintain sufficient cash flow to resist various uncertain risks. Therefore, the failure of the game "Star Attack" may become one of the fuses for Sony's layoffs.

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