As part of an appearance on the My Perfect Console podcast with journalist Simon Parkin, he defended company executives, saying he doesn’t feel the redundancies are a result of “greed”. He said: “I always tried to minimise the speed with which we added staff because I always knew there would be a cycle and I didn’t want to end up having the same problems that Sony did in Electronics.”
He continued: “I think it’s probably very painful for the managers, but I don’t think that having skill in [game development] is going to be a lifetime of poverty or limitation. It’s still where the action is, and it’s like the pandemic but now you're going to have to take a few [moments to] figure out how to get through it, drive an Uber or whatever, go off to find a cheap place to live and go to the beach for a year. But keep up with your news and keep up with it, because once you get off the train, it's much harder.”
Deering was obviously incredibly successful in his role, leading SCEE through the launches of both the PS1 and PS2. However, these comments seem crass, unsympathetic, and out of touch. We can’t imagine anyone who’s unemployed, with real-life responsibilities, will have the money to “go to the beach for a year” as he implies – and telling industry professionals to explore an entire other industry like Uber driving is insulting.
The American executive spoke specifically about the recent layoffs within Sony, which included the closure of London Studio. “If the money isn't coming in from the consumers on the last game, it's going to be hard to justify spending the money for the next game,” he pointed out. The British team had been working on a multiplayer release, having previously led development on PSVR titles like Blood & Truth.
Deering did end on a positive note – kind of: “These things do recover sometimes a lot faster than you might think, when all is very precarious. I presume people were paid some kind of a decent severance package and by the time that runs out. Well, you know, that's life.”
In other words: let them eat cake.
[source twitter.com, via eurogamer.net]
