Reports are emerging about a wave of layoffs hitting Meta’s VR-centric divisions, hitting their gaming studios hard by shutting down Twisted Pixel Games and Sanzaru Games.
The news comes a day after the New York Times reported that Meta would be cutting around 10% of the staff from the Reality Labs portion of the company, which includes the Oculus Studios division. A day later and those affects are speaking on social medial.
Via Insider Gaming, Twisted Pixel designer Andy Gentile said “I’ve just been laid off. It appears the entire [Twisted Pixel Games studio has been shut down. [Sanzaru Games] too.” This was corroborated by Sanzaru senior level designer Ray West, who suggests that there could be more casualties of Meta and the tech industry’s asinine over-expenditure in pursuit of generative AI.
Twisted Pixel was founded 20 years ago, cutting their teeth in the early Xbox Live Arcade era of gaming with ‘Splosion Man, leading to a four year stay as part of Microsoft Games. They went independent again in 2015, latching onto the nascent virtual reality gaming scene with Wilson’s Heart in 2017, and a clutch of other titles of Oculus Rift. This led to Meta acquiring the studio in 2021, and the development of Deadpool VR for Meta Quest 3 last summer.
Sanzaru Games, meanwhile, got their big break in partnership with Sony and PlayStation. Their second game was Secret Agent Clank, and they went on to remaster the Sly Cooper trilogy for PS3 and develop a fourth game in the series a few years later. Work with PlayStation petered out after this – they ported the God of War Collection and Sly Collection to Vita – and they too were early to the VR party with Ripcoil and VR Sports Challenge in 2016. They were acquired by Meta in 2020 off the back of the popular action RPG Asgard’s Wrath for Oculus Rift, and had released a sequel, Asgard’s Wrath 2 for Quest 2 and 3 in 2023.
This sucks, and we hope those affected at Twisted Pixel, Sanzaru and across the rest of Meta’s business are able to land on their feet.
via Insider Gaming
