Even though Ghost of Yotei has sold more than 5 million copies since its launch last year, developer Sucker Punch Productions is going through layoffs, a reminder that even shipping a highly commercially successful game is not enough to guarantee job security in 2026.
According to an internal email verified by Aftermath, the cuts will affect 26 people at the roughly 229-person studio, with leadership citing “challenges in the market” and assessing the needs of its next project after Ghost of Yotei, though the email does not specify what that next game might be.
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.
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. Next week we will go into more details about the future.
“Challenges in the market” is wild to read considering Ghost of Yotei was Sony’s best-selling game last year. Perhaps the actual “challenges” are that video games are too expensive to make and penny-pinching corporate executives are getting too large a slice of the pie?
Before Ghost of Yotei and its predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima, Sucker Punch was known for its work on the Infamous and Sly Cooper series. The studio was acquired by Sony in August 2011, two months after the launch of Infamous 2 on the PlayStation 3.
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