Schell Games cuts 49 more staff, two months after first layoffs in 24 years

Schell Games has cut 49 jobs, its second round of layoffs in two months and a far larger cut than the August reductions that ended the studio's 24-year no-layoff streak. CEO Jesse Schell has not commented publicly on the October round, but the studio confirmed the number in a LinkedIn statement that described the industry climate as difficult and called the cuts necessary to secure the company's long-term future.

The scale is stark. August's cuts — which Schell framed at the time as "rebalancing" — trimmed departments across marketing, art, design and visual effects, leaving roughly 125 staff. October's round of 49 takes a much bigger bite out of a team that had already shrunk once this year. Among those let go in October was Ashley Godbold, a developer known to the studio's community.

What changed at a studio that prided itself on stability?

The reversal is notable given the studio's own record. In a 2024 interview, Schell called layoffs a choice and described the studio's core principle as not putting employees' jobs at risk. That stance held for nearly a quarter century. It's now gone, twice over, inside a single year.

The business underneath that stance had already shifted. Headset VR once accounted for 80% of Schell Games' projects. By August, that share had fallen to roughly 30%. That's a drop from four in five projects to fewer than one in three, in under a year of measured decline. The studio had been pivoting toward VR-adjacent work, such as interactive projection for location-based entertainment — projects that live in theme parks and venues rather than on consumer headsets.

For players, the practical question is support. Fewer staff could slow or end maintenance for the studio's VR back catalog, including the I Expect You To Die franchise, one of VR's most recognized spy-escape series.

What does this mean for Among Us 3D players?

Among Us 3D is insulated from this round. The four-year partnership between Schell Games and Innersloth behind the game ended before these layoffs. Innersloth has no plans to shut the game down. It took over player support once the handover update went live, and monthly cosmetic drops will continue under Innersloth's control. Monetization, support cadence and live-ops for the title now sit entirely with Innersloth.

A brutal year for VR studios

Schell Games is not an outlier in its category. VR-focused developers have been collapsing or contracting across 2026:

• Sanzaru Games, Twisted Pixel and Polyarc have all closed this year.
• Polyarc, the studio behind Moss, shut down after almost 12 years; 29 employees lost their jobs.
• Polyarc's closure came about six months after major layoffs at the studio in March.
• Mighty Coconut, Kluge Interactive, Survios, Camouflaj and Combat Waffle all made cuts in 2026.
• Vertigo Games Amsterdam and two internal nDreams studios have shut down.

That list spans consumer VR, location-based VR and hybrid studios. If a category leader like Schell Games — with a diversified client portfolio and a two-decade stability record — is cutting twice in a quarter, the signal for smaller headset-only studios is grim.

The wider industry picture

The cuts also track with the broader games business. The ASGC Games Industry Layoffs Tracker projects 13,077 game industry layoffs for the full year — an estimate, but one that puts Schell's 49 within a five-figure industry total spanning every discipline from art to live-ops.

What does this change for studios and teams? For Schell Games specifically, it marks the effective end of its no-layoff identity and a continued drift away from consumer headset development toward location-based and interactive installation work. For the VR sector, it removes another experienced development house from the consumer side of the market. For Innersloth, it confirms Among Us 3D as a fully internal live product.

Watch whether Schell Games details a successor project in location-based entertainment, and whether the ASGC tracker's 13,077 estimate holds or climbs as year-end reporting lands.