The Studio Behind Until Dawn Is Cutting Nearly Half Its Staff

Supermassive Games, the studio behind the horror hit Until Dawn, has started a process that could result in up to 75 employees losing their jobs. The studio announced the cuts on X, calling them "a necessary step to help ensure the sustainability of the company" (Engadget).

This is the studio's third round of layoffs in about two and a half years. Supermassive cut around 90 workers in February 2024 and approximately 35 jobs in July 2025 (Engadget). Game Developer and IGN both describe the current round as the studio's third in three years (Game Developer; IGN).

The size of the cut is large relative to the studio's headcount. As of the end of 2025, Supermassive had 172 employees (Engadget). Losing 75 from that number would be about 44% of the workforce, bringing the studio down to around 97 staff, though the final total may be lower.

According to IGN, the layoffs followed a mixed critical response to Directive 8020, a game Supermassive released earlier in 2025 (IGN). Former CEO Robert Henrysson stepped down in June 2025, weeks after that release (Engadget). The studio's most recent release, per its own homepage, is Little Nightmares III.

Supermassive is known for cinematic horror games where the choices players make change the story. Until Dawn (2015) set the formula: an ensemble cast, high-quality acting captured digitally, and a B-movie feel. The Dark Pictures Anthology turned that model into a series, and The Quarry refined it further. The studio earned a BAFTA for its work in this space.

The pattern at Supermassive fits a wider contraction across the game industry that has been underway since early 2023, though the facts here are specific to this studio. What sets the Supermassive situation apart is how often the cuts have happened: three rounds in roughly 30 months, each following the last without a clear point of stability. A studio that employed 172 people at the end of 2025 and had already shed roughly 125 positions across prior rounds is operating in a fundamentally different mode than it was even two years ago.

The connection IGN draws between the mixed reception of Directive 8020 and the latest cuts is worth noting. Supermassive's approach depends on each game performing well enough to justify making the next one. A weak response to a new title puts pressure on the studio's pipeline at the very moment when headcount has already been reduced to a level that may limit how many projects it can work on at once. The CEO's departure weeks after that release adds another variable.

One open question is what Supermassive's reduced headcount means for its announced and unannounced projects. Directive 8020 shipped earlier in 2025, meaning the studio's current lineup is not fully visible from public information. Little Nightmares III is the latest title to release. Whether the studio can keep developing multiple games at once with a workforce potentially under 100 people is a structural question that the consultation outcome will help answer.

The redundancy consultation process is a UK employment procedure, reflecting Supermassive's status as a British studio. Consultation periods are designed to explore alternatives to dismissal and to determine how staff are selected, and the final number of departures may settle below the stated maximum of 75. The studio framed the process as necessary for long-term sustainability, language that has become standard across the industry but that, in Supermassive's case, carries the weight of repeated use.

In my view, the compounding nature of these cuts is the detail that deserves attention. Individual layoff announcements, however painful, have become a familiar rhythm in game development over the past three years. A studio reducing its headcount by nearly half across three successive rounds, following a leadership change and a mixed-reception release, is navigating something more sustained than a single-cycle downturn. Whether the current round achieves the stability that the prior two did not is the question that will define Supermassive's next chapter.