Ballistic Moon, the studio working on the new remake of Until Dawn for PlayStation 5 and PC, has laid off several employees just a few weeks before the game’s supposed to come out in October.
From what people are saying, about 11 staff members from Ballistic Moon said they are leaving the studio on LinkedIn. But no one knows for sure exactly how many people were let go. Some of these people even changed their profiles to show they’re “open to work,” which means they are looking for new jobs now.
One of the first people to talk about this was Cassy Cornish, who is a junior game designer. She said, “I am sadly being made redundant from my role.” That means her job is no longer needed. Another person, Stuart Campbell, also shared that he was affected by the layoffs and is now looking for new opportunities. This news was first reported by Eurogamer, and now people are also talking about it on online forums like ResetEra.
There’s a list of some of the affected employees, like Harry Williams, a technical designer who worked for two years on the Until Dawn remake. He was really sad about the news and said, “I’ve loved working with everyone at Ballistic Moon and hope I cross paths with members of that family in future projects!” Then there’s Max Brode, a senior producer, Tomos Frater, who is a lighting artist, and Kshitij Gupta, a 3D animator. Frater said he worked with some of the best people he has ever met at Ballistic Moon, but also mentioned, “It’s a real shame it ends this way.”
These layoffs are happening at a pretty rough time for the whole gaming world. In the last two years, many big companies, like Microsoft, Sony, and Embracer Group, have been cutting jobs and even closing down entire studios. For example, Microsoft shut down the studio Arkane Austin, which made the game “Redfall,” and Embracer Group closed the studio Volition, the team behind “Saints Row,” in 2023. Even Sony had to cut around 900 jobs across the PlayStation business.
Ballistic Moon is a studio from the UK that started in 2019 by Duncan Kershaw, Chris Lamb, and Neil McEwan. All three of them used to work at Supermassive Games before starting this new company. They’ve been working on a remake of the game Until Dawn using this super cool tool called Unreal Engine 5.
Now, even though there’s been some sad news about layoffs, the game is still expected to come out on October 4th. But no one really knows why these layoffs happened. Some people think it might be because these were just temporary jobs that ended now that the game is almost ready.
We have to wait and see how the studio handles this big change and if it will affect how well the game does when it comes out. The whole gaming industry is changing really fast, and many companies are finding it tough to keep up with all the new things and money problems.
For now, everyone’s watching Ballistic Moon closely and hoping that, even with the layoffs, the Until Dawn remake will still do well and be a big hit in the market.
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