Sony has been in the news a lot lately for the number of lay-offs that have hit various studios. Uncharted creator Amy Hennig left Naughty Dog, Stig Asmussen left SCE Santa Monica and a there have been various departures from studios such as Sony London, Guerrilla Games Cambridge, Evolution Studios (developing DriveClub) and SCE Santa Monica.
Industry insider Pete Dodd revealed a long list of details on the lay-offs on NeoGAF. Still, take it all with a grain of salt.
Regarding Stig Asmussen’s departure, Dodd said that,, “Stig and his team spent almost 100 million dollars on a game that failed every QA test that took. The game sucked. They shitcanned the game and a lot of the people involved. They offered stig a spot on barlog’s project – he didn’t want to go from game director to something lesser so he quit. This makes sense, right? Shitty game, money wasted, people fired, head guy leaves out of ego? I mean that all makes sense.”
As for Hennig: “Amy Hennig has creative differences about the direction that UC4 should go in. Egos swell, she leaves. She’s happy, she will make another studio much better when she gets there. Justin Richmond, an ally of Hennig’s, gets an offer he can’t refuse from Riot. He leaves.
“These things happen. Naughty Dog is going to be fine. UC4 will still be awesome. Riot will be better with the pickup of Richmond and whoever gets Hennig will be better off. The sky isn’t falling.”
Guerrilla Games Cambridge, which brought us Killzone: Mercenary, is apparently “is working on a vita game that is shit and won’t sell. They slim down as they retool for another project. Again – this isn’t new. This happens a lot.”
“The director of Driveclub doesn’t deliver the game on time. Given more time the game still needs work. He is replaced. Wouldn’t you replace him? Wouldn’t you shit-can Stig’s project that cost them almost 100 mil and had nothing of value to show for it? In fact they should have done it two years ago. The fact they let it go this far is a testament to how much they believed in him after GoW 3.
“And all of this is happening before the fiscal year ends. Is sony trimming fat? Of course. Sony corporation is not in a great spot. So they are tightening up a bit. But a lot of people are connecting dots that don’t need to be connected. Hennig/Richmond is about creative differences and ego. Stig is about wasted money and time. Col Rogers (DriveClub) is about failing to deliver. Taken on their own they all make sense. Combine them together and you get Glenn Beck with a chalkboard.”
There’s honestly a lot more to it than just that and even taken as rumour, it certainly makes for interesting reading. One thing is for sure: restructuring happens in every large organization and by the sound of all the redundancies, Sony is better off for it. Let us know what you think of all this in the comments.
