Speaking to Bloomberg, President of EA Labels Frank Gibeau commented on the layoffs at Peggle and Plants v. Zombies developer PopCap Games. Gibeau said that the main reason for the cuts was to make the studio more efficient and part of a move away from social game development.

Microsoft is looking to snap up some of OnLive's former employees, according to this report from GamesIndustry International. While the company was rumored to be interested in buying the cloud-based streaming game subscription service many moons ago, it looks like the Xbox 360 maker is picking the bones. The company is using EventBrite as its recruitment vehicle of choice, posting the following message:

While THQ's layoffs announced this week pale in comparison to OnLive's last week or reductions in staff at PopCap and the outright closure of Studio Liverpool, a layoff is a layoff and it doesn't matter if you are one of one-hundred or one of ten affected.

Joining PopCap and Funcom (and last week OnLive) workers on the unemployment lines this week are employees of Sony's Studio Liverpool. The studio responsible for the classic Wipeout series and Colony Wars, has been closed as part of Sony's plan to re-focus its resources and energy on other studios. The company said in a statement that SCE Worldwide Studio performs regular reviews of its internal studios. After its latest review of the Liverpool studio, it decided to shut it down.

MMO maker Funcom is laying off some of its staff around the globe as part of previously announced "cost-adjustment initiatives." A Funcom representative confirmed ongoing layoffs in a statement to Polygon, but would not say just how many people might be out of work after the process is complete.

According to this Develop report, EA has been quietly laying off employees at its PopCap studio in Seattle, Washington for the last several months. The information comes by way of VG247, citing an anonymous source close to the situation.

A former OnLive employee (who spoke on the condition of anonymity) described to GamePolitics the last meeting the cloud-based subscription gaming service will ever hold. Earlier in the day this source confirmed a rumor that the company had laid off its entire staff and ceased to exist as a company.

First, our source describes the meeting where employees learned that they had all been let go:

According to this Polygon report, word on the street is that the cloud-based gaming service OnLive is closing down and its entire staff has been laid off today. The report is based on an anonymous email forwarded to the publication by a former employee. According to that e-mail, OnLive will no longer exist as a company as of today, but a new entity will be formed in its place.

Google takes a break from suing other companies over phone designs using patents it acquired from Motorola to lay off 4,000 employees, or 20 percent of the company's work force. Google says that this reduction is part of a larger restructuring plan that will ultimately see the closure of one-third of Motorola’s 90 offices.

Warner Bros. has confirmed that some staff at its Seattle, Washington-based studio have been cut. The staff includes developers that were working on the upcoming Lord of the Rings Guardians of Middle-earth game, and Gotham City Impostors.

This is the third round of layoffs in the Pacific Northwestern studio system in the last several years. In early 2010, WBIE cut 25 employees from Surreal Software, Monolith Productions, and Snowblind Entertainment. In 2011 WBIE laid off 60 employees from WB Games Seattle.

Microsoft has confirmed in a statement this morning that it has discontinued Microsoft Flight and a children’s game for Kinect called Project Columbia. As a result the company has also laid off some staff at its Vancouver, Canada-based studio. How many employees have been given the axe we do not know as of this writing. Earlier rumors indicated that Microsoft had shut the studio down altogether, but those rumors turned out to be false.

THQ continues to cut costs by closing down operations it believes it can live without. Unfortunately for the employees of the company's Quality Assurance operations in Phoenix, Arizona that means a round of layoffs. THQ has decided to consolidate its QA teams into its Montreal location and will be closing its Phoenix, Arizona-based operation in response. According to GII THQ will close the QA center and lay off 57 employees.

Capcom has confirmed that it has laid off a number of employees at its Vancouver-based studio, though it did not disclose a specific head-count.

"Capcom Vancouver has let go seven percent of our employees as a result of unsuitable fit with the studio goals," said the company via Twitter.

Capcom went on to say that the studio is still looking to hire new talent - presumably talent that fits in with the studio's new direction - whatever that may be...

GAME Australia will officially shut down on July 8, with the remaining 15 stores closing across the country, according to administrator PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Last month PwC announced that GAME Australia would be closing the remaining stores but did not offer an exact date at the time. The Administrator for GAME Australia also announced that the remaining assets of the video game retailer would be liquidated to pay down the company’s debt.

It looks like Prototype series makers Radical Entertainment may be closing. The Canadian-based studio has fallen victim to lackluster Prototype 2 sales, according to Activision officials.

Gamasutra has published an open letter from the spouse of a former 38 Studios developer in an article called '38 Studios Spouse' speaks out. In her letter the wife of the former 38 Studios employee details her and her family's struggles during and after the period of time when the studio could no longer pay its employees or cover the cost of their health insurance.

Vancouver-based game development studio Slant Six has been forced to lay off some of its staff, according to Gamespot. Slant Six is best known for developing Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City and several Socom titles.

The company has laid off around a quarter of its staff, but a spokesperson tells GameSpot that these layoffs are temporary. The company employs around 96 people.

Canadian studio Silicon Knights has been forced to cut its staff down to a "core group" that scaling back that will focus "all efforts on future opportunities," according to studio founder Denis Dyack. Dyack did not say how many employees were laid off.

The developer behind Too Human said that the layoffs are a direct result of losing its legal battle with Epic last month. The studio sued Epic for allegedly not supporting its Unreal Engine and for spending all of its time on developing Gears of War. The company was asking for $58 million in damages.

What started out as rumors on Twitter and in this Kotaku story has been confirmed: THQ has quietly shut down its San Diego studio and has let everyone that works there go today. Some have speculated that the company did this on the first day of E3 press conferences to avoid media scrutiny.

According to a GamesIndustry International report RuneScape maker Jagex Software will shut down its latest free-to-play MMO 8 Realms and lay off employees it can't relocate to other teams within the company. Apparently the company will shut down the game because it only garnered 10 percent of the amount of players needed to make the game profitable.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, administrator for GAME Australia, announced plans to close a number of underperforming retail stores in the country today. PricewaterhouseCoopers announced that it will close 60 stores in Australia and lay off 264 employees. Seventeen additional employees will be let go at GAME's head office as well.

"This is a difficult time for employees and closing the stores was not a decision we made easily," said Kate Warwick of PricewaterhouseCoopers. "However it is not financially viable to continue to operate at this level at this time."

According to this Joystiq report 38 Studios has laid off its entire staff across both its Providence, Rhode Island studio and its Bug Huge Games studio in Baltimore, Maryland. An internal memo obtained by news station WPRI reveals the details of the layoff and how employees received the news. The memo reads:

BioWare has laid off an unknown number of the STAR WARS: The Old Republic team today as part of a restructuring plan. BioWare's first MMO launched five months ago to critical acclaim, but it didn't generate the kind of subscriber numbers that both EA and BioWare had hoped for. Recently it was revealed that the number of subscribers had dipped from 1.7 million paid members in February to 1.3 million.

38 Studios has let some of its staff go, according to Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chaffee (I), though how many people we do not know at this point. Chaffee made his comments to the media after a lengthy meeting with the Rhode Island Economic Development Committee and 38 Studios founder Curt Schilling. After the meeting Schilling had no comment for the press, save that his company would not be looking to Rhode Island taxpayers for help.

It's always interesting when a developer becomes so disgruntled with a former publishing partner that they are willing to let it all hang out and say what is really on their minds. Several ex-Free Radical developers feels so strongly about their former publisher that they referred to them collectively as "psychopaths" in a recent conversation with Eurogamer.

Hamburg, Germany-based publisher Dtp Entertainment AG has filed for bankruptcy according to GamesIndustry International. The news comes from GamesIndustry International's German sister site and its editor, Christoph Holowaty.

EA's Montreal studio is reorganizing, with a change of focus from AAA titles like Army of Two (a game it developed) to more social and mobile game properties. Earlier reports, citing inside sources, had speculated that EA would lay off around 50 employees from the studio, but it is believed that many of those employees have simply been reassigned to other studios within EA's studio system. Naturally some people were laid off, but the extent of those layoffs remains unknown as of this writing.

Startup Grind is reporting that, based on poor performance from two key franchises, EA plans to slash between 500 and 1,000 jobs from its global workforce.

Startup Grind reports the cuts were originally planned for April 9, but the site claims that they are "coming very soon". Citing multiple sources, the site claims that EA will cut 5 - 11 percent of its employees.

Earlier this week Japanese newspaper Nikkei reported that Sony planned to announce a jaw-dropping work force reduction of 10,000 jobs worldwide. Today the company confirmed that number, along with other steps it plans to take to return to profitability.

According to a Nikkei newspaper report (by way of Reuters / Yahoo! News), Sony will cut six percent of its global workforce, or 10,000 jobs worldwide. The report says that the company's new CEO, Kazuo Hirai, is doing everything he can to put the company back in the black after four years of being in the red.