Report: Sony cutting jobs at Sucker Punch less than a year after declaring Ghost of Yotei a "major hit"

Sony-owned Ghost of Yotei developer Sucker Punch Productions is making layoffs. The cuts were communicated in an email sent to workers and obtained by Aftermath, which reports that 26 people have been impacted.

"For our next project, we've decided to make some staffing reductions. Several positions across Sucker Punch will be eliminated as a result," reads the email.

”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.”

The news comes less than a year after Ghost of Yotei topped 3.3. million sales worldwide to solidify itself (in the words of Sony) as a "major hit."

In the fiscal report where it shared that milestone, Sony reaffirmed the first entry in the franchise, Ghost of Tsushima, is held in similarly high regard. That's perhaps unsurprising given Tsushima has sold over 13.3 million copies globally (via The New York Times). 

Like other major companies across the video game industry, Sony has made sigificant cuts to its workforce in 2026. At the beginning of the year, the Japanese company shuttered Demon's Souis (remake) studio Bluepoint Games. 

Just months later it axed Dark Outlaw Games—the studio established by former Call of Duty lead Jason Blundell—before it had even shipped a title, and more recently decided to target Destiny and Marathon maker Bungie with large-scale cuts.

Vertical Slice has approached Sony for comment.