It’s been a rough couple of years for Supermassive Games, and honestly, things just got worse. The UK studio behind some of the most gripping horror games ever made — Until Dawn, The Quarry, and the Dark Pictures Anthology — has just announced its third round of layoffs in under two years, with up to 75 employees set to lose their jobs.
If you’ve been following the gaming industry lately, you already know layoffs have been absolutely brutal across the board. But what’s happening at Supermassive feels different — this isn’t a bloated AAA publisher trimming fat. This is a mid-sized, creatively focused horror studio that seems to be fighting for its survival, and that’s genuinely scary for anyone who loves what they make.
What Supermassive Games Actually Said
On August 11, 2026, Supermassive posted a statement on X (formerly Twitter) that confirmed a new “redundancy consultation process” was underway. The studio said the cuts were a “necessary step to ensure the sustainability of our company” and promised to prioritize support for affected staff throughout the process.
It’s the kind of corporate language that softens a gut punch, but make no mistake — up to 75 people are potentially about to lose their jobs at a studio that, not long ago, was one of the most exciting names in horror gaming.
This Is the Third Time in Two Years — Let That Sink In
Here’s a quick timeline, because the numbers are genuinely alarming when you line them up:
- February 2024: Supermassive confirmed a “reorganisation” that Bloomberg reported put 150 employees at risk. Around 90 redundancies were expected — roughly 30% of a 350-person workforce at the time.
- July 2025: Another round hit, with up to 36 employees affected. The studio also delayed its then-upcoming Directive 8020 from October 2025 to 2026 alongside that announcement.
- August 2026: Now this — up to 75 more jobs gone. That’s potentially close to 200 jobs lost in under three years at a single studio.
To make it even more unsettling, none of those cuts seem to have stabilized things. Each round was sold as the fix, the reset, the thing that would “align the team structure with industry changes.” And yet here we are again.
Directive 8020 Didn’t Save Them — And Little Nightmares 3 Didn’t Either
Supermassive’s most recent release was Directive 8020, the fifth entry in the Dark Pictures Anthology, which launched in May 2026 after its delay. It’s a sci-fi horror game — think five playable characters, branching decisions, the usual Supermassive flavour — but it landed to mixed reviews. Not bad, not great, just… mixed.
Before that, the studio took over the Little Nightmares series from original developers Tarsier Studios with Little Nightmares 3, released in October 2025. Again, mixed reception. The charm of the original games was hard to replicate, and critics felt Supermassive’s version didn’t quite capture the same magic. Looking at the Metacritic scores across their recent output — Directive 8020 (72), Little Nightmares 3 (71), The Casting of Frank Stone (68) — you start to see a pattern of games that aren’t bad, but aren’t quite moving the needle either.
In an industry where a mid-tier score is increasingly a commercial risk, that’s a problem.
The CEO Already Left — And No Replacement Has Been Named
Here’s something that didn’t get nearly enough attention at the time: back in late June 2026, just six weeks after Directive 8020 launched, CEO Robert Henrysson resigned and exited parent company Nordisk Games entirely. He was only in the role since January 2024, appointed specifically to steer the studio through the turbulence after co-founders Pete and Joe Samuels departed.
His farewell message was gracious — he talked about broadening the studio’s client base and building a culture of “consistent quality” — but the timing was hard to ignore. No successor has been officially named. An interim leader, Graham Low, stepped in to hold the fort while a permanent search continues.
So right now, Supermassive is operating without a permanent CEO, has no announced upcoming projects, and is cutting another chunk of its team. That’s a lot of uncertainty stacked in one place.
What Does Supermassive Actually Have Coming Next?
Honestly? Nothing confirmed. The studio doesn’t currently have any publicly announced titles in the pipeline. The expectation from fans is that more Dark Pictures content is on the way — executive producer Dan McDonald did confirm earlier in 2026 that Supermassive is no longer locked into the original eight-game Dark Pictures roadmap, which opens things up structurally, but no concrete announcement has followed.
Until Dawn 2 is reportedly in development, but that’s not being made by Supermassive — a different studio has taken that one on. For a studio so closely associated with a franchise, not being involved in its sequel has to sting.
The Bigger Picture: The UK Gaming Industry Is Hurting
Supermassive’s struggles don’t exist in a vacuum. The broader video game industry — and UK studios in particular — has been navigating a brutal stretch. Rising development costs, longer production cycles, changing player habits, and increasing pressure from publishers to deliver live-service hits over narrative single-player games have all squeezed mid-tier developers hard.
UK-based Sumo Digital announced major layoffs earlier in 2026 as well. Battlefield Studios, Bungie, Epic Games — the list of studios cutting staff in 2026 alone is genuinely depressing. Industry trackers estimate somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000 game industry jobs were lost globally in just the first half of 2026.
Studios like Supermassive — which sit between indie and full AAA, making polished narrative experiences that have a dedicated but not massive audience — are caught in a genuinely difficult spot. They’re too big to survive on a shoestring, but their games aren’t the billion-dollar earners that keep the lights on without question.
If you’re interested in other developers navigating rough waters right now, the situation around 1666: Amsterdam’s early access launch shows how even high-profile projects face serious headwinds, and the conversation around GTA 6’s pricing strategy reflects just how much pressure publishers are under to maximise revenue from fewer big bets.
What This Means for Fans of Supermassive’s Games
If you love Until Dawn, The Quarry, or any entry in the Dark Pictures Anthology, it’s okay to be worried — but it’s not time to write the obituary yet. Nordisk Games still owns the studio, and there’s no indication the parent company is looking to shut things down. Layoffs, as brutal as they are for the people involved, are often a restructuring move rather than a death sentence.
That said, the creative talent lost in three rounds of cuts is genuinely irreplaceable. The writers, designers, artists, and developers who get let go don’t just take their salary off the books — they take institutional knowledge, creative relationships, and years of experience with them. You can’t just rebuild that.
The hope is that whatever version of Supermassive emerges from this is leaner but still capable of making the kind of horror experiences that made them special in the first place. The Until Dawn formula — cinematic, choice-driven, horror-soaked — still has a passionate audience. Someone just needs to keep making it well.
The Bottom Line
Supermassive Games cutting 75 jobs is bad news, full stop. It’s the third major round of cuts in two years, it follows a string of mixed-reception releases, the CEO bailed six weeks after the last game launched, and there’s nothing on the release calendar to point to as a reason for optimism.
But there’s still a studio there, still a parent company with investment in it, and still a fanbase that genuinely cares about what they make. The next move Supermassive makes — whether that’s a new Dark Pictures entry, something completely different, or a surprising comeback project — will tell us a lot about whether this is a studio finding its footing or one sliding toward irrelevance.
For now, the thoughts go out to the 75 people about to go through one of the most stressful experiences in any industry. Game development is hard enough when things are going well.
