Amnesia Developer The Chinese Room is “Going Dark for the Next Few Months”

Dan Pinchbeck, the founder of The Chinese Room, has uploaded a new blog post that confirms the studio is “going dark for the next few months”. It also confirms that the studio has had a round of layoffs. The blog post goes into detail and explains why the studio has decided to take these steps.

Pinchbeck states that he had a non-life-threatening health issue in June. As a result, he and the team had a “serious think about things”. This all happened at the end of the development of the studio’s latest game, So Let Us Melt, and after a stressful period where the developer was in negotiations to sign a deal for the new game.

“To cut a long story short, the situation–between financial pressures, trying to keep the lights on for the employed team, the stress of end-of-development, health issues–just wasn’t a tenable thing anymore. It was time to take a break, recharge, recover, and have a good think about the future,” explains Pinchbeck.

As a result, The Chinese Room has decided to lay off the development team. The studio helped their employees find and secure new positions at different studios. Then the team “threw everything we had at wrapping the game”.

The Chinese Room will not be ending completely. They’re just taking “a pause” for now. The games and merchandise will remain on sale and the team will remain active on social media. It currently looks like the development studio is currently three people and they’re working on a new game called “13th Interior” which was originally called “Total Dark”. The Chinese Room will bring on a bigger team when they need to in the future.

This isn’t the end of The Chinese Room however. They hope that their fans will be patient with them during this time. The full blog post can be found here.