Key Takeaways
- 26 employees have been laid off at Sucker Punch Productions, the Sony-owned developer behind Ghost of Yotei, Ghost of Tsushima, Infamous, and Sly Cooper.
- Studio leadership cited industry challenges and the “team needs” for an unannounced next project as the reasons for the cuts.
- The layoffs come despite Ghost of Yotei being one of PlayStation’s strongest-performing games, reportedly selling around 5.4 million copies to date.
- Ghost of Yotei was PlayStation’s top-selling first-party title of 2026 and outperformed Ghost of Tsushima in the same launch period.
- The news was first reported by Aftermath, citing a former employee and an internal email sent to staff.
- More information about Sucker Punch’s next project will be shared “next week” according to studio leadership.
In a year full of grim gaming industry news, here’s another one that stings: Sucker Punch Productions, the Sony-owned studio behind Ghost of Yotei, has been hit by layoffs. According to a report from Aftermath, 26 positions have been eliminated, and the cuts come in spite of the studio’s most recent game being one of PlayStation’s best-performing titles in recent memory. As has become an increasingly painful reality across the industry, commercial success is no longer a guarantee of job security.
What Happened
The news was first reported by Aftermath, which cited a former employee and confirmed access to an internal email sent to staff by studio leadership. That email laid out the reasoning behind the decision — or at least the version of it that studio leadership was willing to put in writing.
“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,” the studio wrote to staff.
The email acknowledged the weight of the moment without offering much in the way of specifics. “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.”
The studio added that more details about the future — including presumably what comes next for Sucker Punch — would be shared the following week.
The Painful Irony: Ghost of Yotei Was a Hit
What makes this particularly difficult to process is the backdrop against which it’s happening. Ghost of Yotei launched in October 2025 to critical acclaim and strong commercial performance, with Sony confirming it sold 3.3 million copies in its first 32 days — outperforming Ghost of Tsushima in the same launch window. Sony itself described the game as a “major hit” and noted that it “exceeded the sales of the previous title in the same period of time” when reporting financial results for the quarter ending December 31.
Since then, the game has continued to sell. Third-party analytics firm Alinea Analytics estimates that Ghost of Yotei has sold approximately 5.4 million copies and generated around $407 million in revenue to date — figures that Sony has not officially confirmed, but which fit the game’s trajectory. During the first half of 2026, Ghost of Yotei was reportedly PlayStation’s top-selling first-party title on PS5, carrying significant commercial weight during a period when newer Sony releases like Marathon and Saros struggled to find comparable momentum.
In October 2026, the studio released the Ghost of Yotei: Complete Edition — a package combining the base game, the Legends multiplayer mode, additional cosmetics, new trophies, and a story-focused DLC episode called Echoes of Sekigahara. That re-release attracted nearly 50,000 purchases in its first two weeks and briefly spiked daily active players to around 327,000. It was, by any reasonable measure, a successful product and a well-supported franchise.
And yet, 26 people have still lost their jobs. This is the games industry in 2026.
The Reasoning: Next Project and Industry Headwinds
The reasoning offered by Sucker Punch leadership points in two directions. First, the broader context of the industry — the same market pressures, rising development costs, and economic uncertainty that have driven waves of layoffs across gaming in 2024, 2025, and into 2026. Second, something more specific: “the team needs for our next project.”
This framing is a familiar one for the industry. When a studio transitions from shipping one game to developing the next, the team composition needed often shifts significantly. The skills required to ship a live game — ongoing support, content updates, multiplayer maintenance — differ from what’s needed in the earlier stages of a new project. Sucker Punch confirmed in May 2026 that Ghost of Yotei: Legends would receive no more major content updates, signaling that the studio was pivoting its attention fully toward whatever comes next. The layoffs may reflect that transition being more disruptive than the studio could manage through natural attrition.
What the next Sucker Punch project actually is remains unannounced. The studio has a rich catalogue to draw from — Infamous and Sly Cooper both have vocal fanbases eager for new entries — and given Ghost of Yotei’s commercial success, PlayStation will almost certainly want to keep the studio on strong footing for whatever comes next. More details are reportedly coming from the studio “next week.”
A Pattern That Won’t Stop
Sucker Punch’s layoffs arrive in the same week that Microsoft announced a Voluntary Exit Offer for 60,000 employees, and just days after EA’s closure of BioWare sent shockwaves through the industry. Even at studios that have recently shipped successful games, the combination of rising costs, shifting team needs, and an industry under structural pressure continues to produce the same outcome for real people: job losses.
The 26 people who have left Sucker Punch built some of the most beloved games in PlayStation’s history. They deserve to land somewhere well.
More of this week’s biggest gaming news:
- Microsoft Launches Voluntary Exit Offer for 60,000 Employees — Xbox’s Involvement Unknown
- Save Mass Effect Billboard Goes Up in Times Square as Petition Hits 226,000 Signatures
- Minecraft Launches Natively on Nintendo Switch 2 Today — Everything You Need to Know
- MW4 Hits 227K Concurrent Steam Players at Launch Weekend
