Following the launch of Ghost of Yōtei’s paid expansion, Echoes of Sekigahara, Sucker Punch Productions has reportedly laid off 26 employees. Aftermath spoke to an ex-employee and viewed an alleged internal email from leadership claiming the reductions were due to “challenges in the market” and the team’s needs “for our next project.”
“After carefully observing the challenges in the market and reviewing the team needs for our next project, we’ve decided to make some staffing reductions. Several positions across Sucker Punch will be eliminated as a result.
”We know this is a lot to take in, and we want to assure you that we did not make this decision lightly. We have given this a lot of attention and worked to support our affected colleagues during this transition as well as we can. … There’s no getting around that this is a hard day. Next week we will go into more details about the future.”
The sequel reportedly sold 5.4 million units with $407 million in revenue since it launched last year. This places it very close to Ghost of Tsushima’s sales in the same period. Unfortunately, this success, and the fact that its financials were “very, very similar,” making it apparently less costly than other first-party PlayStation titles, made little difference.
Of course, Sucker Punch also isn’t providing the same kind of long-term support for Yōtei as it did for Tsushima. The former’s Legends mode, which launched earlier this year, received roughly two months of support before the studio moved on. Its next project remains relatively unknown – Sucker Punch hasn’t even officially announced it’s in the works. Another Ghost to make a trilogy? Time will tell, but given the timing, it wouldn’t be surprising if it skipped the current console generation.
For more details on Ghost of Yōtei, check out our review. You can also view our thoughts on Echoes of Sekigahara and the free Most Wanted mode here.
