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Co-Founders of Supermassive Games have left

Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
I mentioned just a few days ago that Ballistic Moon was probably set up to recruit from Supermassive Games as it is only 20 minutes away by car from the original office.

Sony doesn't own Supermassive Games and Supermassive isn't handling this game, but a company of former employees of Supermassive has been selected to work on this. Why isn't Supermassive? Probably because they have their own priorities. Probably a former employee of Supermassive floated this to Sony as an idea and they created their own company on the basis of this project. If the project is successful, I'm sure they'll be able to recruit even more people from SMG, giving Sony the opportunity to essentially buy SMG without buying it.

Ballistic Moon is a 20 minute drive from Supermassive Games...
Thursday at 9:20 AM

And now we see that the founders of the studio have left.

Supermassive Games co-founders exit company

With the CEO gone, that's a prime situation for people to start leaving the studio in droves to go to Ballistic Moon. The timing around this and the reveal of Until Dawn's remaster are super interesting. Whether they will be involved in Ballistic Moon or not has yet to be revealed, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are involved with it or maybe the movie.
 

Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
Interesting! So ballistic moon is a new upstart that's handling the until dawn remake?

Yeah, it has former employees from Supermassive Games and is located 20 minutes away from Supermassive Games. It seems tailor-built to recruit from there. A lot of reasons why employees would rather work for Sony than Nordisk Film.

Sony can likely pay more and better market and give exposure to their games. A lot more job security working for Sony than a relatively small film company.

It seems like the founders got their pay day and then got out, leaving less than 2 years after selling the studio. I expect they'll finish their current projects slated for this year, but by the end of the year a good number of people will probably jump ship to the new company.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Yeah, it has former employees from Supermassive Games and is located 20 minutes away from Supermassive Games. It seems tailor-built to recruit from there. A lot of reasons why employees would rather work for Sony than Nordisk Film.

Sony can likely pay more and better market and give exposure to their games. A lot more job security working for Sony than a relatively small film company.

It seems like the founders got their pay day and then got out, leaving less than 2 years after selling the studio. I expect they'll finish their current projects slated for this year, but by the end of the year a good number of people will probably jump ship to the new company.

Give me an until dawn 2 and I'll be happy. Saying that I enjoyed the last one. The quarry was decent.
 

Three

Member
Supermassive f'ed up Sony by going behind their back. Sony essentially acquired their studio by acquiring all the devs, without the acquisition money to their execs. LOL!
What do you mean by going behind their back? They didn't do anything nefarious as far as I know.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
What do you mean by going behind their back? They didn't do anything nefarious as far as I know.
It was The Quarry (I think) that was supposed to be Until Dawn 2. Sony funded the prototype for Supermassive. Once the prototype was ready, instead of continuing it as Until Dawn 2, Supermassive started shopping around for that game and ended up striking a deal with Stadia, and turned it into a new IP.

Sony got pissed and canceled the Until Dawn 2 project. Helped set up Ballistic Moon and ordered Until Dawn Remake, which I also believe will do Until Dawn 2 after this.
 
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Kokoloko85

Member
It was The Quarry (I think) that was supposed to be Until Dawn 2. Sony funded the prototype for Supermassive. Once the prototype was ready, instead of continuing it as Until Dawn 2, Supermassive started shopping around for that game and ended up striking a deal with Stadia, and turned it into a new IP.

Sony got pissed and canceled the Until Dawn 2 project. Helped set up Ballistic Moon and ordered Until Dawn Remake, which I also believe will do Until Dawn 2 after this.
Why would Sony trust the same people that did that in the first place?
 

lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
Perhaps one day Sony would acquire ballistic moon? I guess most of the "traitor" has left
 
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Alandring

Member
It was The Quarry (I think) that was supposed to be Until Dawn 2. Sony funded the prototype for Supermassive. Once the prototype was ready, instead of continuing it as Until Dawn 2, Supermassive started shopping around for that game and ended up striking a deal with Stadia, and turned it into a new IP.

Sony got pissed and canceled the Until Dawn 2 project. Helped set up Ballistic Moon and ordered Until Dawn Remake, which I also believe will do Until Dawn 2 after this.
Do you have a source for that? It's the first time I hear it.
 

demigod

Member
It was The Quarry (I think) that was supposed to be Until Dawn 2. Sony funded the prototype for Supermassive. Once the prototype was ready, instead of continuing it as Until Dawn 2, Supermassive started shopping around for that game and ended up striking a deal with Stadia, and turned it into a new IP.

Sony got pissed and canceled the Until Dawn 2 project. Helped set up Ballistic Moon and ordered Until Dawn Remake, which I also believe will do Until Dawn 2 after this.
Fuck them cunts. I was wondering why there was no Until Dawn 2 when the game was a hit.
 

Hudo

Member
It was The Quarry (I think) that was supposed to be Until Dawn 2. Sony funded the prototype for Supermassive. Once the prototype was ready, instead of continuing it as Until Dawn 2, Supermassive started shopping around for that game and ended up striking a deal with Stadia, and turned it into a new IP.

Sony got pissed and canceled the Until Dawn 2 project. Helped set up Ballistic Moon and ordered Until Dawn Remake, which I also believe will do Until Dawn 2 after this.
Where did you get this?

We don't know the details of any contracts. Maybe the contract was just to do the prototype? If so, Supermassive were in their right to shop it around, since they fulfilled that.

We don't know anything about what went down. And I refuse to believe that the people at Supermassive thought "hey, let's screw Sony over!". That's not how business works. There's only really one situation where you could pull shit off like this: When you're about to be bought by someone and suddenly have the legal department of your buyer trying to bail you out.
 
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Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
It was The Quarry (I think) that was supposed to be Until Dawn 2. Sony funded the prototype for Supermassive. Once the prototype was ready, instead of continuing it as Until Dawn 2, Supermassive started shopping around for that game and ended up striking a deal with Stadia, and turned it into a new IP.

Sony got pissed and canceled the Until Dawn 2 project. Helped set up Ballistic Moon and ordered Until Dawn Remake, which I also believe will do Until Dawn 2 after this.

If that is the case the founders probably won't be involved with the new studio. Sounds like Sony is poaching them and they see the writing on the wall.
 

Valedix

Member
It was The Quarry (I think) that was supposed to be Until Dawn 2. Sony funded the prototype for Supermassive. Once the prototype was ready, instead of continuing it as Until Dawn 2, Supermassive started shopping around for that game and ended up striking a deal with Stadia, and turned it into a new IP.

Sony got pissed and canceled the Until Dawn 2 project. Helped set up Ballistic Moon and ordered Until Dawn Remake, which I also believe will do Until Dawn 2 after this.
Yeah and seeing how The Quarry turned out glad to see Ballistic Moon get Until Dawn.
 

skit_data

Member
It's all pretty wierd because Nordisk Film is actually the official distributor of Playstation consoles in the Nordic countries.
 

Kerotan

Member
Regardless Sony are smart to have a studio making maybe 2 of these type of games every gen. They're different and have a place in the market plus with Telltale shitting the bed this type of game has more room to succeed.
 
I liked UNTIL DAWN a lot back in the day
The Brazilian localization was good, lots of funny moments
I hope the devs do ok and have the chance to bring another banger
 

xrnzaaas

Member
All I want is more games with Until Dawn's level of quality. The Dark Pictures games are definitely worse on all fronts, but in my opinion the studio has also failed with The Quarry despite giving it higher production values. It just didn't look that good, in fact many environments were dull and/or too dark to enjoy them.
 
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Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster

Second version of events, Sony backing out over the Dark Pictures Anthology being multi-platform, sounds totally on-brand for Sony.

Although I'd imagine, to be honest, both could be true. i.e. Sony funds a prototype for Until Dawn 2, gets wind of them running a second set of projects for Namco who want it multi-platform on UE, and start dragging their feet on budget and greenlight. At which point Supermassive starts shopping The Quarry about in order to capitalize on work done...

There's also the complication of at the time UD was released, Sony was still in business with Quantic Dream for a very similar style of project, so they may have internally been debating whether they needed both. However, after QD split off, obviously that was no longer the case so attention shifted back towards Supermassive... Or at least Supermassive's talent.
 

nial

Member
Second version of events, Sony backing out over the Dark Pictures Anthology being multi-platform, sounds totally on-brand for Sony.
Nah, we got Déraciné after Dark Souls 3, didn't we?
I want to know the timeline of the supposed events, though. Supermassive Games was still collaborating with SIEE all the way to March 2018 with Bravo Team.
 

bender

What time is it?
Until Dawn was so good and nothing Supermassive did afterwards come close. It's not that the games are worse, it's the story telling and characters that often fell flat. Maybe trying to be episodic affected that but The Quarry really didn't remedy that either. Even if Supermassive got bloated, funneling part of the talent pool into a new company probably doesn't solve the underlying issue. This just feels akin to a one hit wonder in the music world.
 
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