Sumo Digital is one of the best current video game studios making games, even if you may not know it. While their most high profile original title has been the funky and clever Snake Pass, their stock and trade has been doing outsourcing work for the bigger companies.
In that capacity, Sumo Digital has worked with various publishers and franchises, and these include the biggest and best, and even competitors. For example, they developed Crackdown 3 for Xbox Game Studios and LittleBigPlanet 3 for Sony.
Their most recent work, interestingly enough, has been as supporting developers for WB Games biggest hit and bomb in the past two years, Hogwarts Legacy and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. While Sumo Digital had some original games in development, they have announced a serious change in plans.
They shared this message on their website:
“After careful consideration, we have made the strategic decision to focus Sumo Digital exclusively on development services for partners – our core strength and the foundation of our success.
Unavoidably this transition will have an impact on our studios and people. We are committed to minimising this impact as much as possible, exploring all options to retain talent, and supporting those affected with transparency, care, and compassion.”
While the language may seem softer and more compassionate to those given out by AAA companies, like their previous employers in Sony and Microsoft, Sumo Digital seems to be hinting they’re doing the same thing.
With these cancelled projects, the company is going through an internal restructuring. That means they may decide that they won’t be keeping some of their developers employed.
And while bigger companies were called out for their perceived lack of empathy, now that Sumo Digital has been put in this position, they will essentially be doing the same thing. They will be following local employment laws in regards to how they can implement layoffs, and help those employees find placement in other companies if possible.
We wish the best for Sumo Digital and all their employees. With that said, it’s important to be honest about the message being expressed in this message.
It’s an indication that these three years of industry layoffs and project cancellations is a lot more complicated than big time executives getting too greedy and raising unrealistic sales expectations. What the industry is going through right now isn’t easily summed up in an elementary black and white.
As Matthew Ball explains in his State of Video Gaming 2025 presentation, video games are a comparatively a more prosperous industry than others. These periods of shrinking business are comparatively shorter, and are usually followed by longer cycles of growing business. Right now video game developers are still looking for business to pick that up. Unfortunately, it isn’t coming back soon enough for many of those people making our games.
