Naughty Dog Firing Contract Workers; The Last Of Us Multiplayer Title “Is On Ice At This Point”

Naughty Dog is among the most renowned studios in the gaming ecosystem, but even it has fallen into the jaws of layoffs. According to a report by Kotaku, the PlayStation first-party studio has also become a target of dismissals. The team has started to cut the contracts with the various workers that were toiling on its projects. As a result, The Last of Us multiplayer spin-off entry has grown closer to possibly getting sacked altogether.

The sources tell Kotaku that full-time workers have not succumbed to the layoffs, but at least 25 devs under the contracts were affected. Something else that caught the attention of the users and led to controversy is that the fired employees will receive no severance, at least as of now. Moreover, the “impacted” devs and the other workers are being “pressured” to not talk about the firings to the general public to keep it as hidden as possible.

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The contract employees will have to work for the remainder of the month since the contract is still active. The termination will also likely have severe consequences on The Last of Us Factions by Naughty Dog, the multiplayer spin-off that has been in the brewer for a long time. Kotaku sources say that it is on the thin line between being canceled or pursued further. As of now, it is standing “on ice” and in quite a bad place in development.

A report from earlier this year suggested that The Last of Us multiplayer spin-off entry was already in murky waters. Bungie reviewed the game internally and found it quite lacking, which led to Sony taking away resources focused on the project. Naughty Dog previously alleged that it needed more time to focus on the title to develop it to perfection. Regardless, the layoffs have now made it more difficult than previously anticipated.

pic.twitter.com/DOeO8ZHSlh

— Naughty Dog (@Naughty_Dog) May 26, 2023

Besides Naughty Dog, a plethora of major studios across the gaming industry have seen their fair share of layoffs since last year. The Halo Infinite maker, 343 Industries, had a lot of influential devs become victims of the massive wave of layoffs across Microsoft studios. Sony game studios have also seen their fair share of discharges; the PlayStation Visual Arts studio recently suffered layoffs as an unannounced project got restructured.