Sackboy smiling at the camera in Sackboy: A Big Adventure, a Sumo Digital (and Sumo Group) game

Sumo Group Announces Layoffs Amid Refocus on Support and Work for Hire

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Published: February 4, 2025 9:05 AM

Sackboy: A Big Adventure and Team Sonic Racing studio Sumo Group has announced that it will be laying off an unspecified number of employees as it refocuses on third-party work for hire and support studio contracts.

In a notice on its website, Sumo Group, which counts developer Sumo Digital as one of its subsidiaries (as well as publisher Secret Mode and British studio Auroch Digital), says the layoffs are part of an effort to balance "creative ambitions" and "commercial realities".

As such, Sumo Digital, the main development wing of Sumo Group (which also counts Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 developer The Chinese Room as one of its subsidiaries), will refocus "exclusively on development services for partners".

Sonic and Shadow racing one another in cars in Team Sonic Racing, a Sumo Digital (and thus Sumo Group) game
Sumo Group will refocus on third-party development efforts like Team Sonic Racing, rather than growing its own IP.

The move will, Sumo Group admits, "have an impact on our studios and people", which likely means that some staff members will be laid off. The company doesn't elaborate on how many staff members will be affected.

It does, however, say that it's "committed to minimizing this impact as much as possible", and that it will be "exploring all options to retain talent", so it sounds like the final number of layoffs hasn't been decided yet.

This move essentially means that Sumo will focus more on making games like Team Sonic RacingSackboy: A Big Adventure, and, indeed, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 in future, rather than trying to build its own IP along the lines of Snake Pass or efforts for Secret Mode.

If you're worried about how this might affect the fate of Bloodlines 2, you needn't be; Sumo says this move "has no impact on existing or future commitments with partners", so another development reboot probably isn't on the cards. Whew!

Sackboy platforming through a fabric level in Sackboy: A Big Adventure, a Sumo Group game
Expect to see more games along the lines of Sackboy: A Big Adventure in future, and fewer like Snake Pass.

It's fair to say that Sumo Digital's last few major games, as well as those developed by other Sumo Group subsidiaries (like Warhammer 40k: Boltgun), have been third-party efforts anyway, so this probably won't change the studio's outward-facing impact too much.

We'll have to wait and see what kind of changes this shift in direction brings about at Sumo Group. Stay tuned for more.

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Joe has been writing for TechRaptor for several years, and in those years has learned a lot about the gaming industry and its foibles. He’s originally an… More about Joseph