In yet another round of bad news for the gaming industry, Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures developer Supermassive Games is about to be hit by a wave of layoffs.
As reported by Bloomberg, the studio has notified 150 employees that their jobs are potentially being cut in the near future. Supermassive Games is expected to lay off 90 employees, just under a third of its approximately 300 person team.
The company tweeted out a statement addressing the upcoming changes and the process it’s undergoing to decide which positions are being removed. As part of the move, the company said, “We are entering into a period of consultation, which we anticipate will result in the loss of some of our colleagues.” The company said it plans to “focus our efforts on our core strengths and upcoming titles.”
Supermassive Games is the company behind some spectacular horror games like Until Dawn. The studio released another horror hit, The Quarry, in 2022, the same year that the company was acquired by Nordisk Games, and is currently working on Little Nightmares 3 and a new horror game set in the Dead by Daylight universe.
Working in the video game industry is never easy, but it feels particularly rough out there right now. In 2023 we saw roughly 9,000 layoffs in the gaming industry. The effects ripple out beyond just game developers, with companies like Twitch also being affected. Unfortunately, 2024 doesn’t seem to be bucking that trend anytime soon. In January alone we saw layoffs and canceled games from developers like Black Forest Games and Eidos Montreal. Supermassive Games is the latest studio to get hit with layoffs, but it seems unlikely to be the last.