Ghost of Yotei was one of PlayStation’s most well-loved and successful first-party games of 2025. Its recent expansion, Echoes of Sekigahara, continued that legacy and received high marks. Despite that success, developer Sucker Punch Productions has just reportedly seen a wave of layoffs mere weeks after Echoes of Sekigahara‘s launch.
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According to Aftermath, the Bellevue-based developer said its goodbyes to 24 employees, which is quite substantial for a team with only around 200 people. The outlet got ahold of an internal email speaking to the cuts.
“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,” said the email. “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.”
Sucker Punch has yet to publicly speak about the alleged layoffs. PlayStation has been mum, as well.
Ghost of Yotei Sold and Reviewed Well
This is all strange for a number of reasons, mainly given Ghost of Yotei‘s success. Gaming data analytics firm Alinea Analytics recently published its findings on the 2025 open-world title. Over the last year, Ghost of Yotei has sold around 5.4 million units (36.8% of which were physical) and made around $407 million in gross revenue.
Around 1.8 million copies were sold just this year and about half a million of those units were just in the last few months in the leadup to Echoes of Sekigahara. Even though Ghost of Tsushima sold a few more copies in its first year (about 7 million), the added cost of Ghost of Yotei means the two grossed more or less the same amount of money in that time period.
Ghost of Yotei also had a relatively big base of players. Alinea estimated it was pulling in around 150,000 daily active users before doubling when Echoes of Sekigahara was released on October 1st.
To top it all off, studio co-founder Brian Fleming stated Ghost of Yotei‘s budget was around $60 million. Even if that is just in the ballpark or a slight underestimation, Ghost of Yotei still made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.
Producing critically acclaimed game and making a decent profit only to see layoffs is a harmful trend, one that has been infecting the gaming industry like a plague. PlayStation has done this in the past, too. Just four months after the launch of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 — which broke records and sold millions of copies right from the jump — Insomniac Games also let some people go. Publishers keep seeming to want to cut and cut and cut without regards to who it is cutting and how it will affect the broader team, and it remains to be seen how much longer this can continue.
Do you think publishers are ever going to learn that layoffs are only hurting everyone involved? Let us know in the comments.
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