A Third Redundancy Round Since 2024
Supermassive Games, the UK developer behind The Dark Pictures Anthology, Until Dawn, Little Nightmares III and Directive 8020, opened a redundancy consultation on 11 August 2026 that it expects will result in the loss of up to 75 roles. The studio described the move as a necessary step to help ensure the sustainability of the company, and said its priority through the process would be to support those affected.
GameDeveloper, which first reported the consultation, and outlets including Engadget, GameInformer and Gematsu confirmed this is Supermassive's third layoff round in under three years. The studio cut around 90 roles in February 2024, then about 36 more in July 2025, a round that coincided with Directive 8020 being delayed from an original October 2025 release into 2026.
The Arithmetic Nobody Has Spelled Out
Add the three rounds together and the number is stark: roughly 90 in 2024, 36 in 2025 and up to 75 now come to close to 200 roles cut inside thirty months. Engadget and GameInformer both reported that Supermassive employed 172 people at the end of 2025 - fewer than the studio has cut, cumulatively, across the same period that headcount was recorded.
That comparison is not something any single report drew out, but it changes what the story means. A studio correcting for one bad year looks different from a studio whose combined layoffs now exceed the size of the workforce it currently carries; the second pattern reads as a cost base that has needed emergency-level correction three times running, not a one-off market adjustment.
Shipping Directive 8020 Did Not Break the Pattern
Directive 8020: A Dark Pictures Game launched on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and PC on 12 May 2026, after the July 2025 delay pushed it back from its original October 2025 date. Reception was modest rather than a breakout hit: Metacritic scores of 72 for Directive 8020, 71 for Little Nightmares III and 68 for The Casting of Frank Stone, Supermassive's three most recent releases.
Former chief executive Robert Henrysson left the company in June 2026, weeks after Directive 8020 shipped. The third redundancy consultation opened roughly two months after his departure - meaning the sequence at Supermassive over the past year has run ship, lose the chief executive, then cut staff again, rather than ship, stabilise, grow.
The Franchise That Isn't Supermassive's to Steer Anymore
GameInformer reported that Until Dawn 2 is being developed by Sony's own Firesprite studio, not Supermassive, and that a different studio also produced the 2024 Until Dawn remake. Supermassive built the original Until Dawn and made its name on it, yet the sequel and the remake of its best-known game have both gone to other developers.
That leaves Supermassive building its future on newer, less-proven properties - Directive 8020, Little Nightmares III, The Casting of Frank Stone - without the cushion of an established hit inside its own walls. It is a narrower base to absorb a bad review cycle or a slow sales quarter, at precisely the moment the studio has fewer staff left to build the next title.
What Repeated Cuts Signal to Developers Evaluating a Studio
For a developer or contractor sizing up a UK studio, a shipped title tells you a project finished; it does not tell you the employer's headcount survives the following year. Supermassive's own record - a redundancy round in 2024, 2025 and 2026 alike - is a plainer, checkable measure of stability than any individual game's review score, and it points the same direction each time it has been tested.
GameInformer noted the cut lands alongside separate 2026 layoffs at Battlefield Studios, Bungie and Microsoft's gaming division, part of a wider pattern of studios shipping games while still cutting staff faster than those games can cover the cost base. Supermassive's three rounds simply confirm that arithmetic at the scale of a single UK studio, repeatedly, rather than once.
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