'I Stopped Believing in Myself': Game Developers Share the Human Impact of Over a Year of Mass Layoffs

With more than 61 million copies sold, Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the best-selling titles of all time, but good luck getting it to run on your PS5 any better than the resolution and frame rate designed for its original PS4 edition. For years now, fans have been begging Rockstar to give the open worlder an update to make it run a bit better on Sony's current console — as it does on Xbox Series X — and as an unexpected patch actually does arrive 18 months after the last one, of course there's no sign of current-gen support.

Studio Media Molecule has been winding down its live development and support for Dreams for a while now, as it shifts towards work on its next big game. The next step in this process is the stoppage of the game's live curation, which has been manually handled by a dedicated team since the game's launch.

From layoffs and a delay to Destiny 2’s The Final Shape to a new Marathon director and the rumored cancellation of Matter, Bungie is in a fair amount of turmoil these days. The developer delayed The Final Shape to allow more time for polish amid reports of pre-orders tracking below expectations.

Sony knows it’s onto a good thing with the PS Store, as with each passing week it continues to add dozens of new titles, all of which are ripe for future reductions and price promotions. That means we’re seeing bigger and bigger sales every month, and time-limited Weekend Offers are becoming a thing on top of regularly scheduled sale events.

Amid ongoing anxiety within Bungie following layoffs last year, the studio is now preparing for another shakeup, this time on Marathon — its upcoming service game intended as its next step beyond Destiny.

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Update: Well, even if you did manage to grab the Stellar Blade demo on PS5 (it was mistakenly released on the PS Store for roughly 25 minutes before being pulled), you probably won't be able to play it from this point on. Sony seems to have updated the demo's license, meaning that if your PS5 is connected to the internet, you'll now be blocked from booting it up.

Women's Day gift ideas: In search of tech gadgets for the special and inspiring women in your life? Be it a friend, sister, mother or partner, showering them with gifts is a great move to acknowledge their presence and all they bring to your life. There is nothing better than gifting your loved ones with a gift they deserve for all the hard work they put in every day. To help you with your gift research, we have curated a list of top tech gadgets from Sony. From headphones to speakers, check out the list of top 5 Women's Day gift ideas.

Critics of Sony’s live service initiative are having their suspicions affirmed lately, as the platform holder struggles to get its projects off the ground. While the excellent Helldivers 2 has launched to great success, Naughty Dog’s standalone adaptation of The Last of Us has been unceremoniously scrapped, while Firesprite’s upcoming Twisted Metal reboot was recently canned and London Studio shuttered entirely. The latter was working on a co-op fantasy game.

Guerrilla’s multiplayer Horizon game is reportedly not among a number of recently cancelled PlayStation titles.

Firesprite Games have spoken about layoffs, revealing PlayStation has failed to protect the studio’s employees from their toxic work culture.

Insomniac Games has announced that it is also being affected by layoffs at Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) and PlayStation Studios.