Supermassive Games Cuts More Than 70 Staff in Second Major Layoff Round

Supermassive Games has laid off more than 70 staff, according to Video Games Chronicle — the Guildford-based studio's second major round of cuts in just over a year and the latest data point in the UK games industry's contraction.

The reductions arrive two months after the studio announced a redundancy consultation and planned cuts in August, when management framed the measures as necessary to secure long-term sustainability. Former employee Frank Tindle reported on LinkedIn that more than 70 people across several disciplines are leaving, including developers, artists, producers, quality assurance and operations staff.

What do the numbers show?

The headline figure of 70-plus departures follows more than 30 redundancies in July 2025. Taken together, the two rounds point to a studio shrinking its workforce substantially within roughly 15 months.

The breadth of the affected roles matters as much as the headcount. When cuts span development, art, production, QA and operations simultaneously, they typically signal structural downsizing rather than the closure of a single project team.

How did the previous round play out?

The 2025 reductions had a measurable production cost: they contributed to a delay for Directive 8020, Supermassive's latest game, which shipped earlier in 2026 after the postponement. The title received middling reviews from both critics and players, according to Video Games Chronicle.

That combination — delayed release, middling reception, then deeper cuts — is a familiar pattern for mid-sized studios whose revenue depends heavily on the performance of each release cycle.

Who is running the studio?

The layoffs follow leadership change at the top. Robert Henrysson stepped down as CEO in June 2026, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family and attend to his personal investment portfolio.

For staff and job seekers, a CEO departure followed by a redundancy consultation within months usually signals that strategic restructuring, not a single failing project, is driving the cuts.

What does this mean for affected workers?

The immediate practical reading: more than 70 professionals across five-plus disciplines are now entering the UK games labour market at the same time, in and around Guildford and the wider South East cluster.

Supermassive is best known for Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology, so the affected cohort carries credentials in narrative horror and cinematic adventure development — a specialised but active niche.

No confirmed details have been provided about how the layoffs will affect future Dark Pictures projects, leaving the studio's pipeline — and with it the hiring outlook — an open question.

For now, the reported scale of the cuts adds another substantial reduction to the studio's recent history, and the absence of clarity on the anthology's future suggests further announcements may follow.