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Sony Online Entertainment has closed down three of its studios and made sweeping redundancies across the company, according to unsubstantiated rumours.
News site Kotaku claims the firm has closed studios in Seattle, Arizona and Denver.
Develop understand that SOE’s workforce had grown to over 700 people, before the alledged cuts.
Meanwhile, around half of the workforce at SOE offices in Texas had been made redundant, along with “a sizeable portion” in the firm’s of San Diego.
Kotaku does not have a reputation for publishing rumours that always turn out to be accurate.
The website claimed that “nearly one-third” of Sony Online Entertainment had been axed across the US studios.
Sony Online Entertainment made notable cuts to its workforce in 2010 and the year prior.
In 2009 the firm laid off 41 staff, in a move to improve the group’s “operational efficiency and reduce costs”.
Another 35 staff were let go a year later. which at the time represented “just over 4 per cent” of its full-time workforce.
The company had worked on the DC Universe Online the PC and PS3 pay-monthly MMO, which was Sony Online Entertainment’s biggest ever launch.
Industry insider George Broussard, the co-creator of Duke Nukem Forever, claimed yesterday that SOE was likely struck with layoffs and a "studio closure”.
Develop has contacted SOE for comment.
