While Striking Distance studios’ The Callisto Protocol might’ve been just okay in the grand scheme of things, this wasn’t enough to keep the studio trucking as it was. Following a series of layoffs, it would seem that even the top talent at Striking Distance is now setting off, including Glen Schofield himself. Bloomberg recently confirmed that Striking Distance’s Chief Executive Officer Glen Schofield, as well as the chief operating and financial officers, would be voluntarily leaving the studio to move on to other projects.
According to Schofield, the situation is “bittersweet.” He did say, however, that he feels that “the studio is in excellent hands,” with the former Chief Development Officer Steve Papoutsis taking over as the Striking Distance Studios CEO. These departures are taking place after The Callisto Protocol received its final DLC chapter, meaning the project is fully wrapped up if nothing else.
The Callisto Protocol head leaves Striking Distance Studios
It was revealed early on that The Callisto Protocol was having trouble recouping its steep development costs. As the production of the game cost over $162M, it was a given that Striking Distance and its holding company, Krafton, would be hard-pressed to make Callisto work come hell or high water. Both hell and high water appear to have struck, sadly. Bloomberg reports that The Callisto Protocol had sold fewer than 2M copies by January 2023, whereas the game needed to move at least 5M for its development to have paid off.
Being a spiritual successor to the original Dead Space, The Callisto Protocol wasn’t shy about announcing this fact wherever possible. Glen Schofield himself cut his teeth on Dead Space as the project’s executive producer, and it was clear that the game was banking heavily on appealing to the same audiences. The biggest issue was, perhaps, that an actual first-party Dead Space remake came out not long after The Callisto Protocol, only to end up being a superior title.
According to Krafton’s representative, the studio’s plans “remain unaffected,” though there haven’t been any announcements as to what they might be.
