Supermassive loses more than 70 people, and the couch-horror studio keeps shrinking

One copy, one controller, five people on the sofa arguing over who's about to get everyone killed. That's how most people I know played Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures games, and it's why Supermassive Games always felt like a studio that understood players with more friends than money. This week that studio got a lot smaller.

According to a LinkedIn post by Supermassive's IT and facilities director, reported by Eurogamer, more than 70 people have left the company this week. Not one department - developers, artists, producers, QA, operations and others. Strictly speaking it isn't a surprise: back in August the studio announced a redundancy consultation it expected to cost up to 75 jobs, and described it as a necessary step for the company's sustainability. So the number we feared in summer is pretty much the number we got in autumn.

What bothers me is the pattern. This is the third round of cuts in three years. Roughly 90 jobs went in early 2024, another 36 in the summer of 2025 when Directive 8020 was delayed, and now this - only months after Directive 8020 finally shipped. Add it up and you're at around 200 people in under three years. "Sustainability" is a word you can use once. The third time, it starts to sound like a business model that doesn't add up.

And that's the uncomfortable part for those of us who like these games. Supermassive makes mid-budget narrative horror: expensive to produce because of the actors and performance capture, short to play, and - let's be honest - the kind of game a lot of people watch on a stream or borrow from a friend instead of buying. In our region that goes double. These are classic pass-around games; one disc does a whole circle of friends and then ends up on the second-hand market. Great for us, less great for the people whose jobs depend on launch-week numbers.

I'm not saying anyone here owes a studio a full-price purchase. Prices are what they are, and local wages are what they are. But the type of game that suits the way we play - one copy, a full room, no subscription, no battle pass - is exactly the type the industry is finding harder to pay for. If Supermassive can't make it work with Until Dawn on its CV, I'm not sure who can.

As far as I can see, the studio hasn't said what the cuts mean for whatever it's making next. Until it does, I'd take any future release plans from that address with a pinch of salt.

Image: Lukas / CC CC0 1.0, source: https://stocksnap.io/photo/computer-office-XGXORJWZIX