Until Dawn remake studio is officially dead, a year after laying off nearly its entire staff

Ballistic Moon, the studio behind the 2024 remake of Until Dawn, has officially dissolved. That's according to a filing dredged up from the depths of a gov.uk website by Insider Gaming, via Gamingbolt. The Final Gazette (notice that a company has been struck off the government's register) marks the date of "dissolution" as the 2nd of February this year, though as Insider Gaming notes, no-one from either the studio or publisher Sony appears to have yet commented. That's likely because most of Ballistic Moon's workers had already said their goodbyes a month before seeing the game's October 2024 release. The studio shed what was later confirmed to be a majority of its staff that September, before "quietly" laying off the remaining workers in December. This left just the studio's founders and "possibly" a "handful" of staff remaining, sources told Insider Gaming at the time.

Ballistic Moon's leadership was reportedly looking for funding leading up to and following the effective shutdown, which might go some way to explaining why the studio never officially announced or enacted closure until filing the Filing Gazette last November. Insider Gaming's sources reported a good atmosphere at the studio, despite instances of unpaid overtime amounting to "weeks" of work in some cases.The remake itself saw a respectable reception from critics, with PC Gamer's Alexander Chatziioannou calling it "a delightful eight hours of the scariest teen-horror has to offer" in his Until Dawn review. Personally, I thought the new editing and soundtrack took away a lot of the original's perfected B-movie schlock in an apparent bid at slick prestige glean, but I did only watch an hour on YouTube before deciding I'd rather just keep my memories of the PS4 version intact.Original studio Supermassive saw its own round of layoffs last July, coinciding with a delay for sci-fi horror Directive 2028, which is now out this May.