Source: Sony Firesprite in disarray, over 100 people have left since acquisition, founders gone, culture dismantled

According to glassdoor data gathered on Resetera, Sony Firesprite is in disarray. Over 100 people have left since the acquisition, the founders and creative leads have jumped ship after recieving their golden parachute, the culture is being dismantled piece by piece, projects are in dev hell, and there is no direction in the studio.

Ruh roh......

https://www.resetera.com/threads/playstation-studios-ot38-i-have-nothing-left-except-spider-man.773426/page-147#post-114230051

Just the current state of Firesprite according to what you can read online. You can hear stuff like:

-Management/leadership since Sony took over is awful. The last shipped project (Horizon VR?) was a nightmare to work with.

-The Sony acquisition has negatively impacted many departments. Since the acquisition they have lost over 100 employees and had Firesprite culture dismantled piece by piece. Sony implemented a hiring pause that put pressure on several teams and caused many staff to have complete burnout.

-Founders jumped ship after they got their golden parachutes (after the Firesprite and Fabrik Games acquisition).

-People are afraid to even give input on their own work and disappear if they challenge the new studio heads.

-Understaffed projects that are often poorly managed.

-Projects in development hell.

-Chaotic production on almost every project. Resulting in wasted time and people running around like headless chickens crunching to get stuff in last minute. Lack of clear direction in many projects. Too many leads/directors (especially after the Sony acquisition). They bite off more than they can chew resulting in cancelled projects. All projects are understaffed resulting on a lot of people getting moved from project to project.

- Management and many employees have limited experience with Unreal Engine and a certain project is suffering as a result. Unlikely to ship.

Remember Pete Ellis?The former Naughty Dog dev who went to Firesprite to work as a game director for their narrative-driven horror game?He left this month.

The same goes for the lead designerwho worked on Horizon Call of the Mountain. Gone.

Over 100 developers left since Sony bought them, game development is chaotic and projects are getting canceled. The Sony acquisition has had a negative impact on the culture and leadership. Before the acquisition there were pretty much only positive reviews on Glassdoor.

Doesn't sound good.

Sounds like mismanagement. When Sony kept saying all these devs MS acquired all secretly hate xbox and all will get vested and leave the second their contracts are up, that sounds like they were talking about themselves, and their own situation.

You hear alot about "Xbox mismanagement" but to be honest, you dont see anything like this happening at Obsidian, or InXile, or Playground, or Ninja Theory. Or Double Fine, or Compulsion Games. Or even BGS. If you follow any of the leads from these companies on social media, they all seem pretty happy to be part of Xbox. People at Activision were screaming and cheering with signs when Phil visited Blizzard a week or so ago. What on earth is happening at Sony?

Is this the studio that we're bought to make live service games?

People have been internalizing and regurgitating the same 2014 SonyGAF bullshit talking points and it's been prevalent across the industry for years. Don't act surprised people will be confronted with rude awakenings.

What is Firesprite?

PlayStation has been in a downward spiral ever since their management prioritized blocking the ABK deal over managing/marketing their own software. Now they have a VR headset they don't support and a upcoming half-assed handheld that serves little to no purpose. I will never understand how this company is the industry leader

@ghostofgolden: "PlayStation has been in a downward spiral ever since their management prioritized blocking the ABK deal over managing/marketing their own software. Now they have a VR headset they don't support and a upcoming half-assed handheld that serves little to no purpose. I will never understand how this company is the industry leader"

I've wondered if they're trying to fail so hard so fast that it's intentional, so when the FTC tries challenging the ABK acquisition in court they can point to all the damage being done at Sony.

OMFG, why didn't I see this sooner? Someone sound the alarms, Sony's doing the Marky-Mark!! Don't take the bait MS!!

But seriously, what is happening with Sony? That’s how many studios now? Naughty Dog, Bungie, and now this (at the minimum). Layoffs like you’ve never heard of.

All these layoffs, international PS5 price increase, PS5 Slim digital price increase, PS+ increase after the new tiers have only been out for one year. It seems like Sony has a bunch of financial problems. All of this is financial.

@ghostofgolden: I’ve said for years, Sony has this strange habit of releasing devices they refuse to earnestly support. Eye toy, Move, VR, and don’t worry, Portal will be another flash in the pan. It’s like they don’t even care. They gotta stop with these money pit time wasting products and stick to what they do best.

Don't worry they're still moneyhatting the industry, that will never change.

@nnoyinghusband: what's weird is they hold it against devs for trying to help them branch out. Lots of publishers too, not just them, fail to weigh they're studios have strength but perhaps marketing was off, maybe the game failed to draw in an audience but was a quality title in its build, rather than retain them just cut them loose.

Sony funded Motorstorm & Pacific Rift on PS3, lovely games though didn't sell very well but quality titles nonetheless. But after their PSP Motorstoem didn't move the needle on that front, they seemed to put the screws to Evolution with their Motorstorm Apocalypse budget on PS3, which just snowballed to closure one game after with Drive on PS4.

Sony studios need to be aware if they're being tasked to work on a niche market that means sudden death. Or hypothetically, if they task Naught Dog to make a PSVR2 game just don't expect target sales to be that of previous TLOU games.

Sony Japan Studios too, they made PS Vita games but then when that never took off it's like they had to suffer for it like it was their fault.

More lemming damage control over Phil needing 100M gamepass subscribers over the next 3 years so that MS doesn't leave gaming.

@last_lap: "Don't worry they're still moneyhatting the industry, that will never change."

I don't think they have the influence they once had to do this as effectively. They essentially have to pay to make up difference in sales from keeping games off competing platforms. Easy to do when XB1 and WiiU trailed PS4, now with Switch and MS willing to pay handsomely to out titles on Game Pass, not as easy. When they were the dominant market presence, they could do such deals cheaply and more frequently, and now they don't have such advantages to do them as cheaply or as frequently. Plus the leak by FTC that Sony took a royalty cut just to have early DLC for COD likely pissed off their biggest partners like Square Enix, who locks their games to PS consoles for peanuts, probably wounded them dearly to hear all they give to Sony for little in return. No doubt future deals will be harder to haggle over given everybody knows what leverage they can work with on royalty splits and that'll piss em off too.

Not to mention the buttload of unflattering news just dropping by the day for Sony would make any company locking down their content to their system think twice about it. Seems many Japanese devs gladly gave up locking themselves down to Sony's ecosystem to take on a more rewarding multiplatform approach.

But they'll still do well, they still get royalties of all the multiplatform stuff. They got a good bit of goodwill to burn through to figure it out, get on the right track.

Problem is Sony is the top selling console and money talks. Not only that but the Japanese are loyal to the Japanese for the most part, so games from the East Sony wouldn't need to pay a lot for. The West is a different story.

VR was doa and the handheld is absolutely head scratching. How do these things get greenlit with either super niche appeal or no support? Who's making these decisions? It has tk be a huge loss for them in an industry that's becoming harder tk swing and miss in and still remain viable.

@TheEroica: I actually support both those ideas to an extent, PSVR2 probably could have done better had Sony incorporated PSVR2 titles into PS Plus (their first party games too day 1 for that matter), I'm fine too with using peripherals for remote play, but this was so pricey I'm sure even Apple blushed, but yeah, overall, definitely those in leadership are not in the same page

Wtf is Firesprite?

To be frank no idea studio existed. Hope for brighter future for those who got laid off.

That's a rumor. Otherwise Jason Schrier would know something about it and report it. Just like he did for Bungie

Dear oh dear… Dat management. They’ve been focusing on live service games, now they’re panicking there’s nothing else in development. Smh. 🤦‍♂️

What are we gonna do, am super concerned about dat management. 😲

Poo bovine brigade on suicide watch. lolol :P

This must be false, Sony nurtures their studios.😎

Cows in full denial!

Bu bu bu it's lems 😂🤣

Yip everything is hunky dory over at Sony!

@tjandmia: Phil only said that so they’d close the deal, and even if he was being serious that remains to be seen. All these layoffs are here, now, and all happening within a short period of time. Real jobs lost. Real lives upended. Real price increases for consumers.

Forum posts citing forum posts as sources. And ResetEra, nonetheless.

But I'll assume it's true for the sake of argument. Firesprite was a huge studio when it was purchased and I'm not necessarily surprised by the turmoil. They were supposed to head Twisted Metal after it was taken from Lucid Games, so I'm guessing that's where the UE5 pandemonium comes from because that was its rumored engine.

The studio, based on the projects it's supposed to be shepherding, had too large a headcount to begin with (300+). How Sony approaches downsizing a team that was bloated to begin with is their prerogative. If you want to discuss a real problem child studio, look no further than Media Molecule. Sony's fear of shutting down MM is baffling, but they don't want to lose the inroads they have, seemingly.

Generally, the most glaring stillborn studio in the industry still remains The Initiative. I've no f*cking clue how they've put out nothing in over 5+ years of existence and have their core development outsourced to Crystal Dynamics.

Shit is going down at Sony.

We're really out here making threads off of Glassdoor posts? ffs

Do yourself a favor and look up any studio on there and you'll think every studio is pile of garbage.

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Some things are obviously undeniable like Pete Ellis leaving and such but, other things aren't always as clear.

Ex. You hear things like management and, leadership issues and, then in the same breathe say it's a bad thing for mangers and leaders to leave. Bruh. Transitional periods exist in management and business. Let them cook and see what comes out of it.

Sony rubs them real good. This must be fake news.

But don't worry everyone... PS Portal is coming. :-S

Their last two games were built on UE so I don't quite understand the UE issue.

We're talking ~8 years of being a UE studio.

Yes! Are you forgetting the numerous threads Sony fannies have made based on equal silliness?😂

@StrongDeadlift: I guess I would need to know context. Do they have 200 employees or 10,000? And, Glassdoor is primarily a place for disgruntled employees to complain without fear of repercussions, so I take it with a grain of salt.

I'm not even sure why I even asked. lol

They had 265 people when they were bought back in 2021.

It's likely they're a good chunk larger now considering they're working on like 3 different projects.

Well... that's pretty significant!

You wanted to focus on dogshit GaaS games? Now suffer.

Damn. Just what the hell is going on at Sony these days?