Supermassive Games announces layoffs for up to 75 staff — the studio's third straight year of job cuts
Supermassive Games, the BAFTA-winning studio behind Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures horror anthology, has announced layoffs affecting up to 75 people. The studio shared the news in a statement on its official X account on 11 August 2026, describing the cuts as "a necessary step to help ensure the sustainability of the company" (GameSpot).
This is the third consecutive year of significant job losses at the studio. In 2024, Supermassive reportedly let go of 90 employees, with up to 150 positions at risk, citing the same reason of continued sustainability. In 2025, around 36 people were laid off, and the studio simultaneously delayed Directive 8020 — the newest entry in The Dark Pictures anthology — to the first half of 2026 (GameDeveloper). That game has since been released, with the latest round of layoffs coming almost three months after its launch.
Supermassive is best known for Until Dawn, the 2015 interactive horror game that helped define the studio's branch-and-consequence storytelling style — choices made by the player determine who lives and who dies across a single playthrough. The studio was not involved in the recent Until Dawn remake, and Sony has since revealed Until Dawn 2, developed by Firesprite, in June 2026. Supermassive's current projects include Little Nightmares III, which it took over after Tarsier Studios developed the first two games in the eerie puzzle-platformer series, and The Dark Pictures: Directive 8020.
The studio has been owned by Nordisk Games since 2022. Nordisk's portfolio also includes Avalanche Studios, the developer of the Just Cause series, and MercurySteam, the developer of Metroid Dread. Both of those studios have faced their own job cuts in the past year — Avalanche closed its Liverpool office, and MercurySteam enacted a round of layoffs, according to GameDeveloper.
For a studio whose games ask players to make impossible choices under pressure, the pattern of annual staff reductions tells a different kind of survival story. Three years of cuts, each framed around the same word — sustainability — leaves a workforce repeatedly asked to absorb the cost of staying afloat.
Supermassive's statement did not specify which teams or projects the latest cuts would affect, nor whether Little Nightmares III remains on its current release timeline. The studio described itself in its X profile as the developer of The Quarry, Until Dawn, Little Nightmares III, and The Dark Pictures: Directive 8020.
