Supermassive Games cuts more than 70 staff after Directive 8020's mixed launch

Supermassive Games, the studio behind Until Dawn and the Dark Pictures Anthology, has completed the layoff round it warned about in August — more than 70 people are out. The cuts land just months after the May launch of Directive 8020, the latest Dark Pictures entry.

The news broke through LinkedIn posts from departing staff. IT and facilities director Frank Tindle, who spent 16 years at the studio, confirmed his last day and named the scale: "More than 70 brilliant people are leaving Supermassive: developers, artists, producers, QA, operations and more. Any studio would be lucky to have them." Tindle joined in 2010 as a one-person IT department and watched the studio grow to over 400 people. Talent acquisition lead Tim Browning also posted about his departure, noting he'd helped hire a large number of staff since joining in September 2022. Back in August, Supermassive cited the need "to help ensure the sustainability of the company" when it announced redundancy consultations affecting up to 75 roles.

Supermassive built its reputation on cinematic horror games where player choices shape the story — Until Dawn became a cult hit, and the Dark Pictures Anthology has run for several entries since 2019. Directive 8020, however, landed to fairly mixed reviews on Metacritic, which likely didn't help the studio's financial position. The broader games industry has been grinding through a prolonged wave of layoffs since 2023, and smaller studios with a single underperforming release have been especially exposed.

Despite the cuts, Supermassive announced just last week that online multiplayer is coming to Directive 8020 at some point this month. Whether a reduced team can sustain ongoing support and future projects remains to be seen. Both Tindle and Browning used their posts to flag the departing staff as available for hire — a small but meaningful gesture for the more than 70 people now looking for work.