Dark Pictures Dev Forced into Layoffs to Ensure the Future of the Company

I start this with a serious statement. This sucks, they do good work and I have all of the Dark Pictures games on disc.

I now follow this statement with a joke: So you’re saying that Supermassive is no longer…super massive.

…I’ll see myself out.

Would love to see them do an established horror ip like nightmare on elm Street or Friday the 13th.

Their games are my guilty pleasure but no one can really deny the quality of the games are truly hit or miss and it looks like that has finally taken it's toll - which truly does suck for the staff.

Seasons change time passes by as the week's become the months become the year's.

My prayer for the ones who got layoff. I hope they get a new job asap 🙏

I only played three of their games; Until Dawn, a bit of Man of Medan (based on the urban legend from my country), and Little Nightmares 3 demo.

I'm definitely rooting for them. I think I own most of their games. It'd be a real shame if they had to shut down.

One of the least shocking layoffs. Anyone could see it was in the cards when they unveiled their last game

Now they're just Massive Games.

Feel bad for those that are laid off but some of the more recent games they've done have been pretty meh.

Saddened but not surprised. I do enjoy a lot of their games but I think they're more niche than they want to admit.

One of these days we’ll read an article titled ‘Studio executives forced to take massive cuts to salaries to ensure the future of the company’. One of these days 🤞

Too much time on pretty, not enough time on gameplay. This cycle will continue until developers realise.

Myself and my partner, along with a large portion of our family love playing their series of games. It will be a sad day indeed if they ever disband.

I sincerely wish them all well on continuing to find a way to produce what is loved by a few, who are clearly not enough for some of their artistic visions at times.

One of the few developers I love to play their content universally, even when at moments it could be argued it's an objectively bad gameplay moment ... I'm still somehow enthralled.

@Americansamurai1 I think that would be an amazing idea for them you know, many members of my friends and family would be all over that idea for them. They have shown they have the creativity to pull it off in a fashion that's ever so well suited to the genre.

Unfortunately their games are perfect when included in PS+ but I wouldn’t consider buying them.

at this point, it almost feels like they got lucky with until dawn. nothing they have worked on since has had the same impact — not even close. and the remake of until dawn was uneccessary and stupid in ways that made it hard to justify its existence (created by a new studio with former supermassive staff and then shut down ironically). this studio is clearly mismanaged and is lacking in sheer talent and vision. i believe the niche they have carved out for themselves is ideal since there aren't many AA/AAA studios making these types of games, but they are lacking in execution. perhaps scaling down the number of projects and increasing the budget would help alleviate the concerns. please don't become the next telltale.

Always sad to see, I hope they find good places to work for, which is increasingly unrealistic in yhe games industry. It would be a poetic turn of events if some of them ended up integrating Firesprite and working on Until Dawn 2.

So they are back down to about 200 developers. Same size as they were in 2021 before all studios went mad and doubled in size for no reason.

@ButteredCrumpet yeah would love to see Robert Englund play freddy one last time.

@Balaam_ Nintendo CEO Satouro Iwata cut his salary by 50% two separate times so they didn't lay off any employees while the 3DS and Wii U underperformed.

Surely one or two jobs could have been saved if they hadn't dropped a wad of cash on the lead actress who, somewhat surprisingly given her job, can't act.

I've enjoyed the first three Dark Pictures entries but her performance brought a new low to the series.

Very niche company, I've never enjoyed any of their games but I've only tried a couple, they just don't interest me at all. The employees will be alright, sucks but they will be fine. I imagine they all have decent CVs, they might have to get a job in a supermarket or something, worse case scenario. They will survive, just might need to downgrade a bit in life.

If only there was a way to know that these companies are too big to sustain....if only there was a way to see that they are just super massive....

Sad to see as I’ve enjoyed a few of their games probably the highest on the list were Until Dawn and Until Dawn Rush of Blood though Switchback is good it isn’t as good. They were often asked by the VR2 community to port UD RoB and they replied “it is down to Sony, ask them”, yeah it wouldn’t have brought in the big bucks but every little helps (tm).

Hope all peeps affected land on their feet.

Turns out gamers want games they can actually play. Who would have thought?

@For-Kier Adventure genre has been existed for decades and gamers love games like Dragon's Lair, Broken Sword, Grim Fandango, Monkey Island, Wolf Among Us, Heavy Rain, Dispatch, Until Dawn etc.

I actually had no idea The Casting of Frank Stone was made by them and had their traditional story with consequences model. I thought it was DLC for Dead by Daylight so I passed on it. I definitely regret that.

I like what they do, and I want them to keep doing what they are doing, so I don't know what the answer is here.

It's sad but I think Until Dawn was a fluke at this point.

I'm surprised that the studio has managed to produce so much in spite of its poor quality since then.

It's horrible, but there's obviously an issue at the studio, either bad management or poor producers making poor choices.

So they aren't doing Until Dawn 2 as Firesprite is. But yet Dark Pictures they have done how many? I mean only so much works over time of an IP or formula, while other games fit more of audiences or some become streaming games and not sales. It's tough.

None of their games really interested me and I respect adventure games for sure, but many of these ones aren't for me at all.