Sucker Punch Cuts 12% Of Its Staff, Despite Ghost Of Yotei's Success
More firings from Sony Interactive Entertainment
"ColonelFancy" Mike Lind
10/27/20262 min read
The PlayStation brand continues its trend of dour news in 2026, and in what's becoming all too common, another announcement of employee layoffs. Reported by Aftermath, the Sony-owned development team Sucker Punch has seen roughly two dozen staff members let go. Sucker Punch, developers of the action games Ghost of Tsushima and Ghost of Yotei, employs around 200 individuals, and the number of fired workers arbitrarily makes up 10 to 13% of the crew, and likely more, based on the info and ex-employee told the publication. The exact number is not known as of this writing.
Considering this follows the critical and financial success of Ghost of Yotei (released in October of 2025), it further sends the message that even a highly acclaimed release doesn't provide any job security. As of June, the action game was Sony's best-selling game in 2026. The following email was sent to Sucker Punch staff:
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.
At the end of the fiscal year of 2025, Sony had begun to financially restructure their internal plans, as revenue has become quite the problem for the brand. With prices that have skyrocketed for software, misguided live service concepts, and high operating costs, Sony hopes that each major release sells like a blockbuster to justify the exorbitant spending on first party titles.
The recently released Marvel's Wolverine, developed by Insomniac, had a massive launch, seeing 1.9 units sold. But sales have dropped off considerably, leading to concerns that it may have trouble turning a profit. This was another game that saw a wave of cuts in the midst of its development. Bluepoint Games, who was a reputable team that worked on the Demons Souls remake, saw their doors shut down back in Februrary.
Sony's job cuts total up to roughly 1,430 staff globally, including up to 900 jobs in 2024 across their game divisions.
SOURCE: Aftermath