Sony confirm Fumito Ueda has left company, working on “contract basis”

That rumour about Fumito Ueda having left Sony and finishing The Last Guardian freelance? Turns out it was true. Sony confirmed the news to Gamasutra, largely reiterating what had already been leaked - specifically that Ueda had left the company as an employee but was still working on a “contract basis” and committed to finish the game. That ties up with Ueda’s cryptic tweets that there was “No need to worry” and that the The Last Guardian was “still in production”.

There’s no discussion of why he’s left or what he’s planing for his next move but it doesn’t exactly sound great for the long delayed game. Executive producer Yoshifusa Hayama also left the project recently. When we last spoke to SCEE CEO boss Jim Ryan he admitted there he wasn’t aware of any “imminent announcements”. Even as far back as August president of SCE Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida told VG247 that “The Last Guardian team has been making progress. It’s been very difficult in terms of seeing the progress: not as fast as we’d been hoping for, and the team has been under big pressure” which implies the problems have been brewing awhile.