Ballistic Moon, the studio behind the 2024 remake of Until Dawn, has officially dissolved, according to filings discovered on a UK government website. The dissolution was recorded on 2 February this year, though neither the studio nor publisher Sony appears to have commented publicly.
The closure marks a grim endpoint for a studio that began with genuine promise. Founded in 2019 and acquired by Sony in 2023, Ballistic Moon was led by Duncan Kershaw, Neil McEwan, and Chris Lamb, all of whom had previously held major roles at Supermassive Games, the team that invented this style of choice-based horror. They aimed to refine the "butterfly effect" formula and prove they could deliver high-end, terrifying experiences using the latest technology.
Until Dawn was their only major project. Most of the studio's workers left a month before the game's October 2024 release, after the studio shed what was later confirmed to be a majority of its staff in September 2024, then quietly laid off the remaining workers in December. This left just the studio's founders and "possibly" a "handful" of staff remaining.
The collapse stemmed directly from the remake's commercial failure. Many consumers were unwilling to pay $59.99 for a remake of a game that wasn't even a decade old, especially since the original was still easily available for much less money. The player count on PlayStation 5 during its first week was 28 percent lower than Concord, a shooter infamously taken offline just two weeks after launch; on Steam, the remake only managed to reach a peak of 2,607 concurrent players.
Critical reception offered little encouragement. The remake received lukewarm reviews with an Opencritic score of 69; many players felt the new visuals actually stripped away the creepy atmosphere of the original by trying too hard to be realistic.
Ballistic Moon's leadership was reportedly looking for funding leading up to and following the effective shutdown, which might explain why the studio never officially announced or enacted closure until filing the Final 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 Ballistic Moon closure sits within a broader industry crisis. The video game industry experienced mass layoffs which peaked in January 2024; an estimated 45,000 jobs were lost from 2022 to July 2025, with these layoffs having reverberating effects on both established and emerging games companies. While major publishers absorbed enormous cuts, smaller independent studios have proven equally vulnerable when projects underperform.
What remains unclear is whether Ballistic Moon's failure stemmed primarily from poor execution, market miscalculation, or both. The team possessed genuine talent and a proven pedigree. The original Until Dawn (2015) remains a well-regarded entry in the cinematic horror genre. Yet remaking a game that aged reasonably well, at a premium price point, with technical changes that some reviewers felt diminished the original experience, proved commercially unviable. While there were initial talks with Sony about providing additional funding to keep the studio running and support the game with patches, those funds never materialised.
The studio's dissolution leaves its small team dispersed, its only product abandoned without ongoing support, and its original vision unfulfilled. It is, ultimately, a story about the intersection of creative ambition, commercial pressure, and the brutal economics of modern game development.