PlayStation is shutting down London Studio amid mass layoffs

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) is shutting down The Getaway and VR Worlds developer London Studio.

The studio was established in 2002 after Sony merged Studio Camden and Team Soho to create a new entity. Over the years, it helped develop major franchises like The Getaway and Singstar, and had recently focused on creating VR experiences such as Blood & Truth, VR Worlds, and Wonderbook.

The company had been working on an unannounced online multiplayer game set in modern day, fantasy London. The project was described as a brand new franchise and was kickstarted in 2022.

Sony layoffs in 2024

SIE announced the closure of London Studio alongside sweeping layoffs that will impact other key studios such as Firesprite, Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, and Guerrilla.

The company is preparing to cut around 900 jobs in total, representing around 8 percent of its global workforce. Outgoing SIE boss Jim Ryan shared those restructuring plans with employees in an email sent out this morning.

At the time of writing, London Studio is still advertising a number of open positions on its website. PlayStation Studios boss Herman Hulst indicated the wider company must take a "different approach" to continue crafting titles that "push the boundaries of play and deliver what you expect from us."

"PlayStation 5 is in its fourth year, and we are at a stage where we need to step back and look at what our business needs," he wrote in a blog post. "At the same time, our industry has experienced continuing and fundamental change which affects how we all create, and play, games.

"Delivering the immersive, narrative-driven stories that PlayStation Studios is known for, at the quality bar that we aspire to, requires a re-evaluation of how we operate."

Sony recently delivered record quarterly PlayStation 5 hardware sales, but those still failed to meet internal expectations.

Quarterly sales within the company's Game & Network Services segment also increased by 16 percent year-on-year to $9.2 billion, with Sony attributing that upswing to the performance of "non-first-party titles."