Until Dawn Creator Supermassive Games Laying Off Staff

News

Written by Don Parsons

Published: August 11, 2026 9:48 AM

The developer of narrative horror games Until Dawn, and the Dark Picture series Supermassive Games has announced today that they are having to lay off part of their team.

In the announcement, they state that they have begun a "redundancy consultation process" that will result in upwards of 75 employees being laid off. According to the announcement, "this is a necessary step to help ensure the sustainability of the company", though it is worth noting this is the third year running that Supermassive has had layoffs. In 2025, when they delayed Directive 8020 to 2026, they laid off up to 36 employees citing the challenging environment, and in 2024 they laid off around 90 employees, or about 25% of their team at the time, based on reports from Bloomberg News at the time.

Since the breakout hit of Until Dawn, the team at Supermassive has been trying to capture that same success with various titles like The Quarry, a spiritual successor to Until Dawn, the Dark Picture series, and the development of Little Nightmares 3. Most recently, they released the delayed Directive 8020. Reportedly there have also been cancellations of projects like a Blade Runner game that we'll never see.

This comes at a point when layoffs are continuing to be everywhere in the video game industry, with Xbox recently closing/selling several studios as part of laying off 1600 employees, and planning to layoff another 1600 during this fiscal year. Nor is Microsoft the only company beyond Supermassive laying off employees, with many companies doing so, such as Sony with Bungie when they stopped developing Destiny, Fortnite and would be Steam competitor Epic Games, and even the studios that made the best selling game of 2025 Battlefield 6, faced layoffs from owner Electronic Arts before it went private earlier this month.

Don Parsons | Senior Writer

A longtime lover of speculative fiction, in almost all its forms, Don joined TechRaptor in 2014 on a whim sending in an application as he was looking for… More about Don

Additional topics:
• Supermassive Games
• Layoffs