Naughty Dog is reportedly firing dozens of contractual developers from The Last of Us.

In the realm of game development, one of the most renowned studios appears to have succumbed to the recent wave of staff reductions. Kotaku’s sources, who opted to remain anonymous, assert that Naughty Dog, the game developer under Sony’s wing, responsible for crafting the immensely popular PlayStation franchises Uncharted and The Last of Us, is poised to shed a substantial number of its contracted workforce.

The narrative specifies that the bulk of these contracted individuals were engage in Quality Assurance (QA) testing at Naughty Dog. However, this shift is not confine solely to QA. As members of the artistic and production teams are also grappling with its repercussions. The piece suggests that this could impact roughly 25 developers in total. It’s worth noting that the studio houses around 400 developers in total.

The story asserts that no permanent staff at Naughty Dog will bear the brunt of this downsizing. The contracted personnel are apparently being request to remain with the company until the culmination of October. With no provisions for severance pay in sight.

Despite Naughty Dog’s latest entirely original game, The Last of Us Part II, having debuted over three years ago on the PlayStation 4 in June 2020, the developer has unveiled remastered renditions of Uncharted 4 in 2022, tailored for both the PS5 and PC, along with The Last of Us Part I in 2022 for the PS5 and 2023 for the PC platform.

In May, unverified accounts alluded to troubles within the development of a multiplayer game linked to The Last of Us. Today’s report by Kotaku somewhat ambiguously suggests that while the game hasn’t been formally cancel. It is effectively in a state of indefinite suspension.

Naughty Dog did, however, affirm in a communication via the platform X (previously known as Twitter) back in May that their team is diligently toiling away on various projects. Including the inception of a completely fresh single-player adventure. As of now, no official or unofficial details have surfaced concerning the state of this novel game. Or whether it represents an entirely new intellectual property or a continuation of one of Naughty Dog’s previous franchises.