Until Dawn studio Supermassive is laying off a quarter of its staff

taketonews

Another 25% of the workforce of a video game development team is missing, namely the esteemed Supermassive Games. Here are the reasons.

Supermassive Games, the developer of titles such as Until Dawn and The Quarry, has internally announced the layoffs of around 90 employees, as reported by Bloomberg. In total 150 workers were informed that they were at risk of redundancy. According to its website, the company employed about 350 people in 2022, so laying off 90 people would represent about 25% of the workforce.

A statement sent to Bloomberg the firm confirmed the reorganization plans which “will involve the loss of some of our colleagues”. Echoing many recent statements made after layoffs in the video game industry, Supermassive wants to focus its efforts on its core strengths to sustain itself in the future.

The history of Supermassive —

Founded in 2008, Supermassive Games started out making DLC ​​for LittleBigPlanet and some smaller titles published by Sony before moving on to larger projects. She eventually specialized in horror games, achieving critical success with Until Dawn in 2015, a remaster of which is in the works by another team, followed by The Dark Pictures Anthology for Bandai Namco and The Quarry for 2K Games. Two games are scheduled for release in 2024: Little Nightmares 3 with Bandai Namco and The Casting of Frank Stone with Behavior Interactive. Another chapter of The Dark Pictures Anthology has been announced, but it doesn’t have a release date yet.

The trend of layoffs —

Supermassive’s layoffs are part of a broader industry effort to cut costs that has been ongoing since at least 2023, with big players like Embracer, Amazon, Riot Games and Microsoft all reducing their clout. Smaller studios such as Supermassive and ZA/UM are adding to the industry’s existing problems, with label Die Gute Fabrik (Mutazione and Saltsea Chronicles) announcing the suspension of operations.



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