Schell Games, the studio best known for Among Us 3D and the I Expect You To Die series, confirmed its first layoffs in the company’s twenty-plus-year history.
Late last week, several Schell Games employees posted news of layoffs at the veteran studio. One person unaffected by the cuts stated “this has happened not because of anything you did or did not do. Our industry (and beyond) right now is hemorrhaging.” The cuts reportedly hit multiple departments including marketing, art, design, and visual effects.
Schell Games CEO and founder Jesse Schell has said in past interviews that he avoids layoffs as a company philosophy, including this quote from a GamesIndustry interview in 2024:
At the heart of it all is choosing not to put jobs at risk. We’ll put cash at risk when we make a game, but we don’t put jobs at risk. Even if our own IP brings in zero dollars, we still haven’t put any jobs at risk—we still have a path forward where we’ll be able to keep people on. So, in a lot of ways, it’s a choice.
Schell’s highest-profile VR project is Among Us VR, which started as a VR-only title of the hit social deception game before being ported to flatscreen, renamed Among Us 3D, and eventually turned over to Among Us developer Innersloth. The studio has also released horror game Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire, free-to-play hybrid title Project Freefall, and the I Expect You To Die series of games. Aside from gaming, Schell Games has also done XR work in location-based entertainment and education.
Schell Games joins a growing number of studios working in game development, in and out of VR, that have had layoffs in 2026. In VR specifically, that list includes Polyarc Games, Mighty Coconut, Kluge Interactive, and nDreams among others.
