Editorial: Sony’s Closure of Firewalk Studios Further Proves That Workers Pay the Price for Mismanagement, Need Union Protections

October 29^th saw the announcement from Herman Hulst, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, stating that Firewalk Studios would be closing amidst two months of uncertainty within the studio. As with most emails of this type, the message was coated with phrases of thanking Firewalk “for their craftsmanship, creative spirit and dedication” as well as believing the decision is the “right one to strengthen the organization”. However, this studio closure is just another notch in Sony’s latest record of spending vast sums of money to acquire studios in efforts to break into an oversaturated space that eventually punishes workers with layoffs and closures.

Firewalk released Concord, a game branded as a competitive 5v5 shooter, on August 23, 2024 with a disastrous launch. The game itself received mediocre reviews and only 10 days later, Sony would pull the game offline and refund every person that had bought the game. Between that day and October 29^th, Sony would declare they “have spent considerable time these past few months exploring all our options” then proceed to lay off all 172 employees at Firewalk. It is estimated the industry has suffered over 13,000 layoffs in the year 2024. But these layoffs and others at Sony are a result of a company that is attempting to break into an already oversaturated genre (specifically, live service games) and when exorbitant profits are not realized, workers suffer instead.

This also leads us into the discussion on the unsustainable cost of making video games in 2024. Some of the most popular games such as the Spiderman series, God of War, and others have budgets of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, with Sony having spent over $400 million on Concord. These ballooning budgets put workers in an even more precarious situation when projects do not develop as management expect, eventually leading to cutting staff amidst the unattainable goals set before them.

The CWA in a statement on the closures warned that these layoffs are a “cautionary warning sign of Sony’s interest in furthering its monopoly position in the video game industry”. Currently, Sony owns 19 studios compared to Microsoft’s 23 studios and both companies have been aggressively acquiring in the last four years. While Microsoft has agreed to neutrality with the CWA on union organizing, there does not appear to be any unionized studios at Sony. The video game industry in general has seen a shift in unionizing in the last three years as workers realize their best defense against layoffs is fighting for a contract with protections against the recklessness of these companies and their executives.