Report: Still Wakes the Deep developer The Chinese Room is making layoffs

UK studio The Chinese Room, known for working on titles such as Dear Esther and Still Wakes the Deep, has seemingly laid off a number of employees.

Multiple former staffers shared the news on Linkedin last week, and some indicated they were impacted by a "round of layoffs" at the Sumo Group subsidiary.

At the time of writing, at least nine people have posted about exiting the studio. Although not all of those statements directly mention layoffs, multiple posts refer to jobs being cut.

"We are none of us safe from the headsman's axe when redundancy time comes around," said one former employee, who worked as a technical producer at the studio.

"The scurge of redundancy has struck," reads another post from a former VFX artist who worked on Still Wakes the Deep: Siren's Rest and Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2.

The news comes just months after The Chinese Room parent company Sumo Group confirmed plans to pivot away from original franchises to focus on co-development work—with that announcement coming around eight months after the company laid off 15 percent of its global workforce.

When discussing that business pivot in February, the company said its workforce would be impacted by the strategic shift but neglected to provide specific details.

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The Chinese Room is, of course, known for working on original projects. Since being acquired by Sumo in 2018, the studio has produced titles such as Little Orpheus and Still Wakes the Deep. It also took over development of Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 from Paradox Interactive in 2023.

Game Developer reached out to Sumo Group for more information about the cuts on Friday, June 20. We initially attempted to reach out to three separate members of the Sumo Group communications team via email, but all of those messages bounced.

We then phoned the company's office in Sheffield where a spokesperson told us to forward our request to a generic corporate email and confirmed multiple members of Sumo's Content & Communications team had been impacted by the ongoing restructuring efforts. It's unclear when exactly those cuts took place.

We have once again reached out to Sumo Group for comment.