Supermassive Games to Layoff Portion of Staff

The video game industry continues to see record layoffs in a time of turmoil and transition. With major companies like Microsoft and Embracer Group included in these layoffs, it’s no surprise that smaller studios are also seeing unfortunate mass departures. Supermassive Games, the team behind Until Dawn and Little Nightmares, is joining others in announcing a major shift in operations which includes the termination of a significant amount of employees. An official announcement from the studio, as well as a scoop from a well-known journalist, gives us more insight into the impact of these layoffs.

In a statement posted to X, Supermassive Games announced that it was “undertaking a reorganization.” This would result in the termination of team members, as Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier clarified in a scoop of his own, the total number of folks laid off would be “around 90.”

This comes after countless layoffs in the video games industry so far in 2024 after an already brutal 2023. The cause of these layoffs varies from studio to studio, but also comes at a time when video games are turning record profits. There’s a major disconnect between revenue and a growing trend to decrease team sizes, signifying that something is faulty in the way the industry is running.

Currently, Supermassive is working on two known projects. The first, Little Nightmares 3, is another entry in the horror-adjacent platformer that takes fantasy worlds and injects them with creepy characters and light puzzles. The other project, The Casting of Frank Stone, is a single-player narrative game set in the Dead by Daylight universe. No additional insight was given to the impact of these layoffs on either project, but neither is set to a release date as of now either. There are likely other projects in the development stage at Supermassive that are yet to be announced, which will be impacted by these layoffs as well.