Schell Games, the Pittsburgh studio behind Among Us VR, has cut about 40% of its workforce in its second round of layoffs this year. CEO Jesse Schell confirmed the scale of the cuts, which hit just months after the studio's first reduction of the year.
Schell himself confirmed the number, with the studio's chief executive telling Road to VR that the company has laid off “about 40% of the studio.” The cuts follow an earlier reduction in the summer of 2026, when the studio trimmed its staff by 10%, according to Pittsburgh Business Times. After that first round, the studio employed about 125 people, per the same report.
Schell Games, based in Station Square, has not disclosed the exact number of employees affected in this latest round, according to GamesIndustry.biz, which reported that the Pittsburgh-based developer found it necessary to lay off a significant number of employees in order to ensure a sustainable future for the studio. The outlet reported that affected roles span engineering, art and design, sound, marketing, IT support, research and quality assurance.
A Studio Citing Industry-Wide Pressure
The studio pointed to broader turmoil across the game industry as the reason behind the cuts. Road to VR reported that, per the company, Schell Games found it necessary to lay off a significant number of employees due to this challenging time in the game industry. The Escapist reported that the second round amounted to 49 additional jobs cut, in a report headlined “Schell Games Cuts 49 More Jobs,” two months after the studio's first layoffs in 24 years, according to the outlet's coverage at The Escapist.
Schell Games isn't alone in weathering a rough patch. The Escapist noted that other VR studios, including Mighty Coconut, Kluge Interactive, Survios, Camouflaj and Combat Waffle, have all made staff cuts sometime in 2026. Industry-wide, the ASGC Games Industry Layoffs Tracker has projected 13,077 game industry layoffs for the year, per the same report.
Shifting Away From Headset VR
Part of the studio's strain traces to a shift in its own business. Road to VR previously reported comments attributed to the company noting that headset-based VR work once made up 80% of the studio's business but is now closer to 30%. That shift mirrors wider findings from the 2026 State of the Game Industry survey, which found that 28% of respondents said they had been laid off in the past two years, a figure that rose to 33% among those in the United States, according to GDC's survey report.
The same survey found that half of respondents said their current or most recent employer had conducted layoffs in the past 12 months, with two-thirds of respondents at AAA studios and one-third of those at indie studios reporting the same. For a Pittsburgh studio once known for steady growth and a flagship VR hit, the back-to-back cuts in 2026 underscore just how widely the turbulence has spread across the industry it helped build.
