Sony is closing the doors on Firewalk Studios. The news was broken by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, and Insider Gaming was quickly able to align with sources. Sony made the announcement public shortly after the news broke in a message on its official website.
According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Sony’s closures of Firewalk Studios and Neon Koi will result in 210 people being let go in total. Firewalk sees 172 people lose their jobs while Neon Koi is another 38.
“We consistently evaluate our games portfolio and status of our projects to ensure we are meeting near and long-term business priorities,” PlayStation Studios CEO Hermen Hulst said. “As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen SIE’s Studio Business, we have had to make a difficult decision relating to two of our studios – Neon Koi and Firewalk Studios.”
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What’s The Reason Behind Shutting Firewalk Studios
Hulst says that over the last few months, the team at PlayStation explored “all [their] options” regarding the game. Despite these efforts, however, the decision was made to close the studio and sunset the game for a long time.
“After much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio,” he said. ” I want to thank all of Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit, and dedication.” He continued: “I know none of this is easy news to hear, particularly with colleagues and friends departing SIE. Both decisions were given serious thought, and ultimately, we feel they are the right ones to strengthen the organization.”
Concord came out in late August to less than 1,000 players on Steam and roughly 25,000 copies sold. The game was shut down two weeks later with talk of a potential return as a possible free-to-play shooter.
Eventually, that did not happen and Sony has moved on. There was no mention by the company if all employees would be let go or moved to other areas with Sony. There have been nearly 14,000 known jobs lost to layoffs in 2024 within the game industry across almost 160 companies.
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Sony Launches PlayStation VR 2 PC Adapter To Play SteamVR Titles
Sony launched the PlayStation VR2, a virtual-reality headset, in February 2022, which allowed PlayStation 5 players to enjoy new VR games. To expand the player’s library, Sony is about to launch a PS VR2 PC adaptor, which will allow players to access all the SteamVR titles.
PS VR2 is Sony’s second-generation VR headset, and to date, players can only play VR games from the PS library. With the launch of the PC adaptor, Sony wants to bring VR titles present on PC to PS VR2, helping PS VR2 players expand their library.