PlayStation Owned Visual Arts Group Hit With Layoffs

It seems like every major video game studio and their neighbor is laying off workers, with the latest victims of these layoffs being the PlayStation-Owned Visual Arts Group.  When you think of PlayStation Studios, the average person thinks of studios such as Naughty Dog or Santa Monica Studio, while yes, these studios do play a vital role for the company, a major part of what makes their game's so visually striking is the work of Visual Arts studios such Studio Gogo - A studio which has done phenomenal work on several releases such as Redfall and Hogwarts Legacy. Sadly, it would look like the studio is facing layoffs.

Now, if you are unfamiliar with PlayStation Studios' Visual Arts Group, you would be forgiven, as they are often the unsung heroes of many of the company's biggest releases. The group was established back in 2007, and in the past had mainly focused on PlayStation's first-party releases such as The Last of Us and God of War, just to name a few. Despite how much work the studio has done on some of PlayStation's most successful titles, the company will have to be parting ways with several of its employees.

 

We would first learn of these layoffs at Visual Arts Group after several of the studio's employees would make announcements that they will be leaving the company. While these employees didn't go into detail as to why they would be leaving, Daniel Bellemere would announce that he was leaving the company due a wave of new layoffs at the support developer. Bellemere has done work for several major game titles and has done work for developers such as Ubisoft, as a World Designer for Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Immortals: Fenyx Rising. Another of the Visual Arts Group's senior employees that would be leaving the company was rigging artist, Sean Teo and senior technical recruiter, Matt Barney.

Despite all the work these employees have done, they are but one of the many victims affected by a wave of layoffs affecting the video game industry and has happened just weeks after the controversial layoffs that took place at EA-owned studio, Bioware and CD Projekt RED laying off 9% of their workforce. Whatever may come in the future, we hope for the best for the former employees and hope they find new opportunities to continue their work elsewhere.

Daman Shelley (@UndeadandTired)
Editor, NoobFeed