Supermassive Games Cuts More Than 70 After Directive 8020

Supermassive Games has let more than 70 people go in early October 2026, closing an August plan that named up to 75 jobs. Frank Tindle, the studio’s IT and facilities director after 16 years, said developers, artists, producers, QA and operations were among those leaving the Guildford floor.

The cut lands on a studio that already shrank in 2024 and 2025, delayed Directive 8020, then watched that sci-fi Dark Pictures entry land mixed in May. Until Dawn, the game that made its name, now has a sequel in someone else’s hands.

More Than 70 People Left the Guildford Studio

Tindle posted his last day on LinkedIn after a career that began in 2010, when he was, in his words, the IT department, all of it. He left as IT and facilities director and a member of the senior leadership team. In the years between, he wrote, the studio grew from a handful of people to more than 400.

And it isn’t just me leaving today. More than 70 brilliant people are leaving Supermassive: developers, artists, producers, QA, operations and more. Any studio would be lucky to have them. If you’re hiring, DM me and I’ll make the introduction.

Frank Tindle, former IT and facilities director, LinkedIn

Tim Browning, the studio’s talent acquisition leader, posted his own exit the same week. He joined in September 2022 “to recruit some people” and ended up hiring at volume, standing on stages and shipping games. The people going out the door are not a single discipline.

WHO LEFT WITH TINDLE

• Development: Tindle named developers among the more than 70 people leaving, the group that builds the branching horror the studio sells.
• Art and production: Artists and producers are in the same wave, the crews that dress and schedule those cinematic shoots.
• QA and operations: Testers and operations staff are going too, which reaches past the game teams into the running of the building.
• Hiring itself: Browning’s departure takes out the person who spent four years filling the seats the studio is now emptying.

In August, Alejandro Arque Gallardo, game director on Directive 8020, had already said his own role was at risk and that no decision had been made. The studio has not published a department-by-department list of who was included in the final 70-plus.

The August Consultation Came in Close to 75

On August 11, 2026, Supermassive posted the statement that set this month’s number. It said it had begun a redundancy consultation it expected would “result in the loss of up to 75 of our colleagues,” calling the step necessary “to help ensure the sustainability of the company.” Support for those hit, it added, would be the priority through the process.

A statement from Supermassive Games. pic.twitter.com/Sy5i7iB59Z

— Supermassive Games (@SuperMGames) August 11, 2026

Tindle’s “more than 70” sits just under that cap. The studio has not issued a fresh headcount of its own since the doors closed on those roles, so 75 remains the planned ceiling and more than 70 is the figure a departing director is willing to put his name under.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The October exits: More than 70 people left in early October 2026, across development, art, production, QA and operations.
• The August cap: The studio’s own statement on August 11 put the consultation at up to 75 colleagues.
• The last game: Directive 8020, the fifth Dark Pictures title and the studio’s first in space, came out on May 12, 2026.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Staff still in Guildford: Year-end 2025 accounts listed 172 people; nobody has confirmed how many remain after this round.
• The next project: No new game has been named as the reason the remaining team is being kept on.
• A new chief executive: Robert Henrysson left on June 29, 2026, and no successor has been named in public.

That silence is the point of the consultation language. UK process lets a studio name a ceiling, then land slightly under it, without ever posting the spreadsheet.

The 2025 Accounts Already Showed the Strain

This is the third redundancy wave in a little under three years, and the books filed before the August statement already described a smaller, loss-making company. The 2025 group accounts filed in July put headcount at the Guildford studio at 172 people on December 31, 2025.

THREE ROUNDS OF CUTS

Tindle’s “more than 400” is the peak he watched from inside the building. The 172 figure is the official year-end 2025 roster, after two of those three rounds. They are not the same census.

The same accounts reported a post-tax loss of £9.4 million (about $12.6 million) for 2025 and revenue of £10.3 million, around £6 million below 2024. “The decreased turnover for the year reflects both a reduction in the number of Work for Hire projects undertaken in 2025, and lower royalties from historically developed games,” the filing reads. Losses narrowed, it added, because costs were being managed and amortisation on own-funded games was lower.

That sentence is the dry version of why a cinematic horror studio that once staffed hundreds is now letting producers and QA go in the same week. Motion-capture shoots, branching scripts and a live-action cast are expensive even when the games sell. When the work-for-hire pipeline thins and the old royalties shrink, the payroll that looked normal at more than 400 people becomes the thing the accounts are trying to cut.

July 2025’s statement had dressed the second round as adaptation. The industry, the studio said then, “remains a challenging and ever-evolving environment,” and it was changing team structure “to better align with these changes.” Directive 8020 moved with those jobs. Little Nightmares III, which came out in October 2025, did not. A year later the alignment still required up to 75 more people to leave.

Directive 8020 Did Not Refloat the Studio

Directive 8020 shipped on May 12, 2026 for PlayStation 5, PC and Xbox Series, with Supermassive listed as publisher as well as developer. It is the Dark Pictures series in space: the colony ship Cassiopeia, a shapeshifting alien, and a crew that can die on the player’s choices. The studio also added stealth and a Turning Points rewind, a change from the older QTE-and-talk formula.

Critics were split in a familiar way. The game holds a mixed Metacritic score of 72 from 61 reviews, with 33 positive, 27 mixed and one negative. The user score is 5.6 from 313 ratings. On PC the Steam tally is harsher still: a mixed 62% from 2,296 player reviews on Steam, 1,433 of them positive and 863 negative, against a $49.99 price.

DIRECTIVE 8020 ON THE BOARD

• Release: May 12, 2026, after a slide from an October 2025 window that was announced with the July 2025 cuts.
• Critics: 72 Metascore, mixed, from 61 reviews; 54% of those notices were positive.
• Players: 5.6 user score on Metacritic; 62% positive on Steam from 2,296 reviews.
• The complaint: Stealth stretches that reviewers and users both called repetitive, set against praise for cast and body-horror.

Some notices called it the best Dark Pictures game. Others said the hide-and-seek loops killed the pace that Until Dawn and The Quarry built out of talk and panic. That split would be a forum argument if the studio had another funded anthology entry already shooting. It does not appear to.

The trailer still sells a premium sci-fi horror. The May launch did not generate a second statement about growth. Six weeks later the chief executive was gone. Three months after that, the consultation that named 75 jobs was on the studio’s X account. Early October is when those jobs actually ended.

Until Dawn 2 Belongs to Sony Now

The brand that built this company is busy without it. Until Dawn 2 was shown at Sony’s State of Play in June 2026 and is due on PlayStation 5 on January 28, 2027. Firesprite, a Liverpool first-party studio Sony bought in 2021, is developing it with AdHoc Studio. Supermassive is not on the project.

The sequel follows a ghost-hunting crew, Dead True, toward Akishima Island after a stop at Blackwood Sanitorium. Peter Stormare returns as Dr. Alan J. Hill. Dacre Montgomery, Neil Newbon and a new live-action cast fill the rest. Montgomery has said he joined in 2022, which means Sony’s version of Until Dawn was already in motion while Guildford was still cutting people to finish Directive 8020.

WHERE UNTIL DAWN LIVES NOW

• The original: Supermassive’s 2015 BAFTA winner, the game Nordisk still cites when it describes the studio.
• The remake: Ballistic Moon shipped an Until Dawn remake in 2024, then collapsed. A UK gazette recorded the studio’s dissolution on February 2, 2026.
• The sequel: Firesprite and AdHoc, published by Sony, January 28, 2027, with no Supermassive credit.

A 2025 film exists in that same slipstream. None of it puts payroll back into Ranger House on Walnut Tree Close. The Dark Pictures anthology, The Quarry, The Casting of Frank Stone in the Dead by Daylight universe, and Little Nightmares III are the recent Guildford list. Only Directive 8020 is still close enough to this cut to be named in the same breath, and it is already in the remainder bin of mixed scores.

Who Owns Supermassive Games After the Cuts?

Nordisk Games, the Copenhagen games arm of Nordisk Film and the Egmont group, still holds the shares. It took a 30.7% stake in March 2021 and completed full ownership of the Guildford studio on July 12, 2022, making Supermassive its third wholly owned studio at the time. Mikkel Weider, then Nordisk Games’ chief executive, said the buy would “increase our support to the team.” Pete Samuels, then Supermassive’s CEO, called the security of that partnership a reason for excitement.

Samuels and co-founder Joe Samuels left in early 2024. Robert Henrysson, a Nordisk partner since August 2022, became CEO in January 2024. He stepped down on June 29, 2026, 48 days after Directive 8020 launched, and left Nordisk as well. Nordisk’s own note said he had rebuilt the leadership team, sharpened strategy, and overseen Directive 8020, which it called the strongest critical reception in the Dark Pictures series to date. That is a 72.

As the CEO of Supermassive Games, I was honoured to guide the studio through intense industry change, broadening its client base and establishing a culture of consistent quality across all aspects of the game development process. To everyone at Supermassive Games, I am so grateful for everything I’ve learnt and experienced with all of you. You are the greatest storytelling game studio on earth, you rock!

Robert Henrysson, former CEO, LinkedIn, June 29, 2026

He said he would spend the summer with his family, tend a small portfolio of investments, and stay open to advisory work. No replacement has been named. The October redundancies therefore land on an interim structure, under a Danish owner that has already watched the Until Dawn sequel walk to a Sony studio, after a self-published sci-fi game that critics liked more than players did.

Tindle is still offering to introduce the people who left. That is the part of this week that will outlast the consultation PDF. The remaining Guildford staff, whoever they are, will have to make the next horror game with a roster the 2025 accounts had already started to shrink, and with the IP that once paid the bills now dated for January 2027 on someone else’s masthead.