Ballistic Moon, the studio working on the Until Dawn remake, has had an undisclosed number of layoffs.
As reported by Insider Gaming, at least five staff at Ballistic Moon have revealed that their roles have been made redundant at the studio. They identified the following:
- Stuart Campbell, a game programmer
- Cassy Cornish, a junior game designer, and
- Harry Williams, a technical designer
The original Until Dawn was developed by Supermassive Games and released to the PlayStation 4 in 2015. For reasons that remain undisclosed, Supermassive suddenly parted ways with Sony and went off on their own. Supermassive released a spiritual successor to Until Dawn, called The Quarry, with new publisher 2K Games across multiple platforms in 2022.
For their part, Sony moved development for the remake to Ballistic Moon, a new studio that was founded by three former Supermassive Games staffers, in Duncan Kershaw, Neil McEwan and Chris Lamb. Ballistic Moon has been around since 2019. They announced the Until Dawn remake earlier this year as their first major project, and it may have been the title that they were set up to make.
Save for the unlikely event that it was undisclosed, Sony has not bought Ballistic Moon. Therefore, the financial woes in Sony’s gaming division, and the layoffs that they announced last February, did not lead to this sudden round of layoffs at Ballistic Moon.
If we were to speculate, the unfortunate most likely explanation is that Ballistic Moon does not have enough projects lined up after the Until Dawn remake. While there will still be people needed to finish up the project and provide update support in the near future, that may not be enough to support having as many employees as the studio has.
It’s certainly somewhat perplexing, as it implies that Sony has not confirmed plans to make more Until Dawn games in the near future. Sony recently engaged their film division to make a movie adaptation, so it certainly looked like they were investing in the IP in earnest.
Whatever the reason, this is just the latest installment in the wave of ongoing layoffs across the video game industry. We wish the best for the staff who are exiting Ballistic Moon, and hope that they can find placement back in the video game industry. We also certainly hope that this wave of layoffs doesn’t go on for that much longer, as we had already seen signs from new job openings in the industry that the trends were already turning it back. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the trends have completely turned around just yet.
