Sucker Punch Lays Off 26 People Even as Ghost of Yotei Leads Sony's 2026 PlayStation Sales
By CriticalPixel ·
Sucker Punch, the Sony-owned studio behind Ghost of Tsushima and Ghost of Yotei, has laid off 26 people, according to a report from Aftermath published on October 26. The number comes from an ex-Sucker Punch employee who spoke to the outlet, and Aftermath also viewed an email from studio leadership to staff. The outlet puts the studio's total headcount below 200, which means 26 jobs is a serious bite out of the team. This is the developer that shipped a critically acclaimed open world game and a well received expansion, and it still ended up with a round of cuts. If you were hoping that making a hit buys a studio some peace, today is another reminder that it does not.
What Sucker Punch told its staff
Per Aftermath, leadership wrote: "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. Several positions across Sucker Punch will be eliminated as a result." The email also told staff "There's no getting around that this is a hard day," and promised that "Next week we will go into more details about the future." Notice what is missing: no mention of which teams were hit, no word on what the next project is, and nothing about whether this is the end of the cuts. The phrase "team needs for our next project" is carrying a lot of weight in that message, because it frames the layoffs as a planning decision rather than a money problem. In the sources we opened, there is no separate statement from Sony, so everything here rests on one outlet's reporting plus the leaked email text.
A hit that did not buy job security
The timing is what makes this sting. IGN India reported on an Alinea Analytics estimate that Ghost of Yotei sold 1.1 million copies on PlayStation in 2026 and generated $77.6 million in revenue, the most of any Sony game this year. Alinea also says the game is well on its way to 5 million lifetime sales since its October 2025 launch. It sells fewer copies than Tsushima did at the same point, but it brings in more money because Sony held the price while Tsushima was discounted hard and early. Aftermath adds that Yotei was reportedly Sony's best selling PlayStation title of 2026 as of June, and that the Echoes of Sekigahara expansion was critically acclaimed.
To put the sales in context, the same Alinea numbers have Marvel's Spider-Man 2 at 699,000 copies this year, Astro Bot at 601,000 and the recently released Saros at 415,000. Yotei is ahead of all of them on units for 2026, which is not what a struggling first party studio looks like. Keep in mind these are analyst estimates, not figures Sony published, so treat the exact totals with some caution. Even with that caveat, the direction is clear: the studio's latest game earned its keep and then some. That is why the "challenges in the market" line in the staff email reads as hollow to anyone who has been following the sales charts.
How people are reacting
Reaction is still limited, since the news only broke a few hours before we looked, so there is no real consensus to report. The posts we saw on X were mostly resigned or sour, with people pointing out that even a successful game does not protect a team. One commenter argued that Yotei is already out and early development on a next project does not need the headcount of late development, and that Sucker Punch has said it wants to stay at its current size. Nobody has confirmed that theory, so take it as a fan's guess. Another post put the cut at 10 to 15 percent of the studio, which is a ballpark from a fan, not a figure from Aftermath, who only say the studio is below 200 people.
The CriticalPixel take
Here is the uncomfortable part. A studio that Sony itself relies on for prestige open world games just lost 26 people at the moment its newest game is topping Sony's own sales list. The same week cycle already had bad news elsewhere, with Aftermath's news feed listing Electronic Arts closing BioWare and laying off hundreds on October 21. Layoffs used to follow a flop. Now they follow a hit, a well reviewed expansion and a healthy revenue number, and the explanation is always some version of challenges in the market. If a publisher wants us to believe that line, it should show the numbers behind it, because the public numbers point the other way.
The honest caveat is that we only know what Aftermath has reported so far. We do not know which roles were cut, whether the next Sucker Punch project is affected, or whether Sony plans to say anything beyond that internal email. Leadership promised more details next week, so that is the date to watch. Until then, 26 talented people just lost their jobs at a studio that did everything right, and that should bother everyone who plays these games. We will update this story if Sony or Sucker Punch say more.
Sources
Aftermath: Layoffs Hit Ghost Of Yotei Developer Sucker Punch
IGN India: Ghost of Yotei Is Reportedly the Best-Selling Sony Title on the PlayStation in 2026