Sanzaru Games, the studio behind Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time on PS3 and The Sly Collection, has been shuttered as part of a round of layoffs at Oculus Studios.
Following news that broke yesterday of Meta wishing to reduce its Reality Labs workforce by 10%, social media posts have appeared today from some of those affected by the layoffs. Ray West, a developer at Sanzaru Games, posted to LinkedIn (via VGC) that "several Meta game studios were closed today, including Sanzaru".
Another developer that's reportedly been closed is Twisted Pixel Games, which made classic Xbox Live Arcade titles like 'Splosion Man. Most recently, it did Marvel's Deadpool VR. A third team closed as a result of the layoffs is Armature Studio, which did Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate and the Meta Quest 2 VR version of Resident Evil 4.
A spokesperson from Meta then confirmed all the developer closures in a statement: "We said last month that we were shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward Wearables. This is part of that effort, and we plan to reinvest the savings to support the growth of wearables this year."
The term "Wearables" refers to the company's range of AI smart glasses and wristbands.
While the Sly Cooper series originally came from Sucker Punch Productions, it was handed to Sanzaru Games for the 2013 release of Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. The year after, it brought The Sly Collection and the God of War Collection to PS Vita in remastered fashion.
Sanzaru Games remained an independent studio during that time, but was acquired by Facebook / Meta in 2020 after making Asgard's Wrath for the Oculus Rift headset. It then made Asgard's Wrath 2, which is considered one of the best VR games ever made.
How do you react to the news? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
[source gematsu.com]
Comments 32
WOW!!! Dang. With this news, it really seems like VR is in dead water at this point unless the new Steam VR headset actually bring growth to the market
Who would have thought that VR would once again fail?
Sad but not hard to see coming.
What a shame, both Sanzaru and Armature were really good studios that languished under Facebook ownership. I own most of their Vita games, even though imperfect, I was happy to play them there.
This paints a dire picture for VR gaming if Meta's money machine can't bother to keep their premier studios open.
I feel Sanzaru did a great job with Sly, I personally really liked Sly 4. Massive shame to see them shuttered.
Everyone knows there has always been more money to be made in AR than VR, because it can be used for everything outside of entertainment, this doesn’t mean they are abandoning VR; this represents a small part of their VR capabilities. They aren’t going to just throw away their VR advantage.
Still, it is sad we will get fewer of the best games every made, but money talks, especially for a company like this.
I didn’t realise Meta owned game studios, but they’re a huge corporation so of course they would. Hopefully the talent will be snatched up by worthier hands
Jeez this is sickening news, both really talented studios and the Asgards Wrath games were both brilliant.
Big loss for Quest gamers but my sympathies for the staff and hope they find work soon (preferably in VR but wouldn't blame them for shifting to something more financially stable).
Ouch. This sucks. Say what you will about Facebook but they actually did a pretty good job making Quest one of the few success stories in VR. I guess it wasn't successful enough though sadly. A real shame. There's is some great stuff on Quest 3.
IMO Meta should of just sold Sanzaru to like Playstation that way they can continue making remaster collections and more Sly games, and sold the other ones as well
So the end is in sight for VR once again, I very much doubt Sony will touch VR again as well.
I really liked Sanzaru games during the PS3 era; was very disappointed when they were purchased by Meta. Very sad ❤️
This is exactly what happens when large corporations buy everything up and then change paths, they shut it all down regardless of talent.
Aaaahhhh, why couldn't they sell them or give them back their independence.
"We've got so much money, we don't need to try selling them, just shut them down and dust that area!" Probably what they were thinking.....
Hopefully the team stay together and create a new studio. Such a sad day.
@BeyondKnight They should have Sold both Sanzaru and Ready at Dawn to Sony instead of shutting them down.
My mum works at an opticians and they’re really trying to push these Meta glasses… in one of the most deprived parts of Glasgow.
No one wants those glasses. I have never seen anyone wearing them before.
@BeyondKnight @Areus Sony might not have wanted them, after all they didn't work with them again after the Order and Sly 4.
Meta is far and away the biggest publisher/funder of VR (they’ve literally lost tens of billions) and it’s clear it’s not going to break out anytime soon so the shoe was bound to drop eventually. I hope the laid off land on their feet.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-platforms-lost-73-billion-165823364.html
Come on Sony step in and buy sanzaru, we need more sly
Meta is just awful
sony needs to bring back in sanzaru and ready and dawn and rebrand them as new studios , they could use more support studios.
I was one of the few people that seemed to like Thieves in Time, so this is just really depressing.
So, the developers of some of the best VR and Meta exclusives – Asgard's Wrath, Deadpool VR, Resident Evil 4 VR on Quest – get awarded for their wonderful work by getting shut down by Meta.
I love virtual reality, it has provided some of the most unique and immersive experiences in video games. But Meta being the leader of VR, and with basically all of their competition besides maybe Valve basically nothing for VR, Sony/PlayStation included, I'm worried that this is it for virtual reality.
Between Microsoft, Meta, and Google, I think that big conglomerates getting involved in the video game industry has been a massive mistake.
Maybe Valve's new headset can change things for virtual reality, maybe Sony can actually develop some damn VR titles, and maybe some other competitor could join the VR medium, but right now, it isn't looking good. For now, hoping the best for everyone laid off.
Oh man, Twisted Pixel? I loved their games on Xbox 360.
they made the worst sly cooper game
Sucks Sly Cooper isn’t a thing anymore. Sadly for me more and more of what i liked about PS1-PS3 is dead and gone. PS4-PS5 hasn’t moved me much. Sure i own them and play them a little bit when something comes along i want to try. But so much of my time with PS is behind me. Sly was among one of my favorites. Happy we still got Ratchet and Clank, i love that series. Still my favorite PS5 title. Beat it 3 times.
«A spokesperson», nameless ghouls. These companies are too big man, people become an afterthought to these cretins
@HotGoomba I think the problem isn’t big companies per se but big companies that spend crazy amounts of money hoping for unrealistic levels of market growth. Facebook was burning over a billion a month in the hopes that VR was going to become a ubiquitous appliance like cellphones have become. That spending was great for lots of VR developers but meant they weren’t scaling for the actual (modest) size of the market, they were building for the mass market Facebook hoped for.
I love VR but realistically its immersion is a double edged sword that means it only appeals to a fraction of core gamers (who are of course greatly outnumbered by casual gamers). There is money to be made but expectations need to be realistic because the biggest pots of money are elsewhere (though there are no easy, safe, big bets anywhere).
I don’t think anybody is going to replace Facebook but I’m hoping Valve’s headset grows the ecosystem and Sony steps up a bit though there doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm in its current stable outside of Polyphony Digital and Media Molecule (bows towards Dreams). Team Asobi did wonderful things in VR but realistically they don’t seem to want to come back.
https://youtu.be/jFe5ZGIQMxo
Damn - that's the biggest developers of VR NOT catering to the PSVR 2!
One can hope that it somehow benefits Sony and it's competing platform PSVR 2, but it does seem like it could also be time to accelerate through my VR centric backlog to sell the headset off and cut my "losses" investing into PSVR 2. I don't think, I'll actually do that, but I just recently got PSVR 1 back from my sister's kids. I could sell that to start off.
RIP to Sanzaru Games, they were behind both Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (Sly 4) and the Sly Cooper trilogy PS3 remasters.
Our only hope for "Sly 5" now is if another PlayStation Studio develops it. Maybe Team Asobi, since they have platformer experience with Astro Bot?
NO...! 😟
We will never see the sequel of Sly Cooper Thieves of Time.
Glad I have owned all the PS3 version of Sly Cooper games since 2020.
They are pretty good games to play.
Meta has fired the studio leads, laid off most of the staff, and cancelled the games of Camouflaj (Batman) though they haven’t technically shut down the studio it’s a distinction without difference,
https://www.resetera.com/threads/camouflaj-creators-of-batman-arkham-shadow-might-have-been-shut-down-by-meta-yesterday-update-not-shut-down-but-affected-by-layoffs.1406413/page-2#post-150084910
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