14 DAY TRIAL // A number of sources inside Sony Online Entertainment have said that the company has closed down three of its development studio and that a third of all the people it had employed have been laid off.
The rumor has been given some credibility by George Broussard, a video game developer that has worked on Duke Nukem, who tweeted about the situation at the Seattle studio that SOE maintains.
It seems that the studios in Denver, Tucson and Seattle have been totally shut down, with all the people working laid off, while big cuts were made in San Diego and in Austin.
Sony Online Entertainment has not offered any official comment on the rumors.
At the moment, SOE is known to be working on three new video games while doing support work on a number of others.
The Agency is a spy-themed MMO that has been in the works for quite some time and was to be launched in late 2010 but has been delayed.
It is supposed to arrive on the PlayStation 3 and on the PC at some point during this year and the developers say the game will be very different from the normal grind of other MMOs.
SOE is also working on a new Planetside game, currently only confirmed on the PC, and it is rumored to also be creating a new Everquest installment, both bearing the Next moniker at the moment.
Sony Online Entertainment has just announced that PlayStation 3 launch of Free Realms, a free-to-play and micro-transaction-powered MMO that has been already been pretty successful on the PC.
The company has also been talking up the success of DC Universe Online, the superhero-powered MMO that is also available on the PC and the PS3, and has said that it is planning to release new content for the game.