Following its announcement back in August that it had started the redundancy consultation process, developer Supermassive Games now laid off “more than 70” of its employees. Confirmation of the layoffs was spotted by Eurogamer through the LinkedIn profiles of now-former employees, including IT and facilities director Frank Tindle.
“More than 70 brilliant people are leaving Supermassive: developers, artists, producers, QA, operations and more. Any studio would be lucky to have them. If you’re hiring, DM me, and I’ll make the introduction,” wrote Tindle.
When it announced the redundancy process, Supermassive Games had called it a “difficult decision” that was “a necessary step to help ensure the sustainability of the company.”
The last major game released by Supermassive Games was Directive 8020 from earlier this year. However, the title’s release may not have been the commercial hit that the studio was hoping for, since its launch was followed by Robert Henrysson stepping down from his position as the studio’s CEO in June.
“As the CEO of Supermassive Games, I was honoured to guide the studio through intense industry change, broadening its client base and establishing a culture of consistent quality across all aspects of the game development process.
“Leading a studio is never a one-man job — it is the entire team’s effort. Our commitment to continuous improvement was, and continues to be, central to everything we do.”
Directive 8020 is the newest entry in the company’s Dark Pictures Anthology series, tied together with its other narrative horror games through various thematic elements. The sci-fi horror game revolves around the crew of the Cassiopeia – a ship on a mission to survey an exoplanet named Tau Ceti f to see if humanity could colonize it following Earth itself having suffered from a massive catastrophe.
The title is a follow-up to 2022’s Dark Pictures Anthology game – A Devil in Me, which capped off the first season of the anthology, which made its debut with Man of Medan in 2019. Directive 8020 is slated to be the start of season 2 and is going to be followed up by three projects – Intercession, The Craven Man, and Winterfold. However, Supermassive Games hasn’t yet made any announcements regarding the state of these projects, and it is currently unknown whether the planned scope of these games will be changed to account for the layoffs.
The Dark Pictures Anthology itself features games where players control a number of different cast members across games that explore different styles of horror stories. Among the key shared elements throughout all of the games is a timeless entity that appears to the player known only as The Curator. While this entity doesn’t play a direct role in the stories, it does tend to provide more information about the stories that are playing out at times.
Aside from The Dark Pictures Anthology, Supermassive Games is also known for its work on other narrative horror games, including 2022’s The Quarry. The studio formed its signature style all the way back in 2015 with Until Dawn.
