Layoffs have reportedly hit Sucker Punch, the PlayStation-owned studio behind the Sly Cooper series, Infamous and last year's Ghost of Yotei.

Aftermath reports that 26 workers have been affected by the cuts, citing a former employee. According to an email sent to staff and seen by Aftermath, studio leadership blamed layoffs on the shaky state of the industry and "the needs" of the developer's next, unannounced game.

"After carefully observing the challenges in the market and reviewing the team needs for our next project, we've decided to make some staffing reductions. Several positions across Sucker Punch will be eliminated as a result," studio higher ups wrote.

"We know this is a lot to take in, and we want to assure you that we did not make this decision lightly. We have given this a lot of attention and worked to support our affected colleagues during this transition as well as we can… There's no getting around that this is a hard day. Next week we will go into more details about the future."

Sucker Punch's last game, the gorgeous open-world sequel Ghost of Yotei, was seemingly a big hit for PlayStation. Ghost of Yotei sold 3.3m copies about a month after launch, outperforming other PS5 favourites such as Astro Bot in the same time period.

While Sony hasn't published updated financial figures since then, the console maker did say Ghost of Yotei "exceeded the sales of the previous title in the same period of time" when reporting its financials for the quarter ending on the 31st of December.

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