Supermassive Games is preparing for another round of job cuts. The British studio behind the original Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology announced it has begun a redundancy consultation process that could result in the loss of up to 75 positions.
In a public statement, the company described the move as a difficult but necessary step to keep the studio sustainable. Supermassive said it would support staff affected by the process, though it did not detail what that support would include. The consultation is the formal step required under UK employment rules before final decisions on redundancies are made.
This is not the first time the studio has reduced its workforce in recent years. After Nordisk Games, a subsidiary of Nordisk Film, acquired Supermassive in 2022, the company carried out a significant round of layoffs in early 2024 that affected around 90 employees. A further process followed in 2025 that put up to 36 jobs at risk. The latest consultation continues a pattern of repeated downsizing.
The timing comes shortly after the release of Directive 8020, the fifth main entry in The Dark Pictures Anthology. That game launched in May 2026 after being delayed from an original October 2025 window and received mixed reviews. Roughly a month after the launch, then-CEO Robert Henrysson left the studio. Nordisk Games appointed Graeme Law as interim CEO in his place.
Supermassive built its reputation on cinematic horror games with branching narratives and an emphasis on player choice. Until Dawn, released in 2015 as a PlayStation 4 exclusive, became the studio’s breakout success and helped define the modern interactive drama-horror space. The company followed it with the Dark Pictures series, which delivered self-contained horror stories in a consistent anthology format, and later The Quarry. A remake of Until Dawn arrived in 2024, developed by Ballistic Moon rather than Supermassive itself.
Despite that track record, the studio has struggled to maintain stable staffing levels under its current ownership. Multiple redundancy processes in a three-year span suggest ongoing difficulty aligning headcount with the commercial performance of its releases and the broader cost structure expected by Nordisk. Directive 8020’s mixed reception and delayed schedule added further pressure at a moment when the company was already operating with a reduced workforce from earlier cuts.
Layoffs of this scale have become common across the games industry, including at studios with recognizable titles and established audiences. For Supermassive, the repeated nature of the cuts raises questions about the long-term shape of the company. Losing up to 75 people on top of previous reductions would represent a substantial further contraction for a studio of its size.
The consultation process means final numbers are not yet locked in. Some roles may be preserved through redeployment or changes to the original proposal, while others will be confirmed as redundant once the process concludes. Until that point, the studio has only committed to the upper figure of 75 and the general promise of support for those who leave.
Supermassive has not announced cancellations of any specific projects alongside the redundancy news. The focus of the statement remained on the need for sustainability and the formal start of the consultation. How the reduced headcount will affect the pace or scope of future Dark Pictures entries, or any other work currently in progress, has not been publicly detailed.
For a studio that once expanded on the strength of Until Dawn and the early Dark Pictures games, the current period marks a clear retrenchment. Multiple rounds of layoffs, a CEO departure, a delayed and mixed-reception release, and now another consultation affecting up to 75 staff paint a picture of a company still searching for a stable operating size under its present ownership.
The redundancy process is underway. The final number of jobs lost will become clear once the consultation ends. In the meantime, Supermassive joins the long list of recognizable game developers that have turned to significant staff reductions in order to continue operating. The studio that created Until Dawn is preparing to get smaller once again.
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