Insomniac, the dev team behind the wildly successful Spider-Man games just had a leak. In the leak, it’s discovered that they were strong-armed by Sony (who owns Insomniac) to downsize staff despite exceeding sales targets and hitting goals. They needed to downsize to help balance Sony’s books, who have acquired a slew of failing or underperforming studios.
Sony owns Studio A, and Studio B. Studio B have underperformed for the last few years, whilst Studio A has outperformed their targets. Because of the shortcomings in Studio B, Sony are now out of pocket, even accounting for the earnings of Studio A. Studio A are forced to eliminate staff roles to make up for Studio B’s mismanagement. A well oiled and well performing Studio have to butcher their teams to balance their parent entity’s books. It’s so fucking short sighted and stupid.
This isn’t just a Sony/Insomniac issue either, I guarantee this goes on throughout the industry whenever there’s a parent company. It’s just how it will always be in those circumstances.