Spider-Man 2
While none of the studios suffering pieces of Sony’s layoffs of 900 PlayStation employees are okay with it, few have made public statements outside of individual employees taking to social media to share their grief and frustration.
However, Insomniac Games, also hit by the layoffs, has issued a public statement about the reductions on their main Twitter account, something other big developers affected like Naughty Dog and Guerrilla Games have not done. Neither account has posted since February 26 and 27 respectively, and not about the layoffs.
But Insomniac is using unusually pointed language to express how bad these layoffs are. Here’s what they said:
“Like several other teams across SIE and PlayStation Studios, Insomniac Games was impacted by yesterday’s layoffs. There are no sufficient words to express our feelings about it. This is a solemn and unprecedented moment for our studio.”
“We are focusing our energy on helping everyone affected through this challenging time. For those who are hiring, there are great people seeking new roles who made important contributions to Insomniac’s history. We’re extremely grateful for them and they will be missed.”
Again, given the lack of vocalization from other studios, this is pretty significant, and the “solemn and unprecedented” language seems sharp and like it’s being wielded against Sony, justifiably so. This message would not have gone out without being approved by leadership so unlike say, Bungie layoffs months ago, which had corporate statements and mass anger at Bungie management, that does not appear to be what’s happening at Insomniac here.
This has to be massively frustrating because Insomniac just released Spider-Man 2 after having delivered Spider-Man 1, the biggest exclusive hit of the PS4 generation. Now, Sony bragged that Spider-Man 2 was its fastest-selling launch in history, moving 2.5 million copies on launch day alone. And announced just two weeks ago, Spider-Man 2 just past 10 million copies sold.
The question, of course, is if Sony’s most successful studio that just delivered a big hit is still getting hit by layoffs, then how can anyone in the company ever feel safe in any capacity?
Sony’s side of this may be that despite Spider-Man 2’s performance, the budgets of Insomniac have just gotten too big. Hacked documents revealed that Spider-Man 2 cost $300 million to make, triple the budget of the first game without being triple the size or length or of course, sales price. So those ballooning costs are likely unsustainable. However, even with those costs, the game needed 7.2 million units to break even, and it’s already hit 10 million a few months later. So again, what’s the actual justification?
You can feel Insomniac’s anger in that statement, and for good reason. While the industry is obviously struggling, it feels even worse when those who are obviously successful and pumping out hits are still laid off regardless. The industry is cracking.
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