Hey everyone.
We have some extremely difficult news to share about Sunscorched Studios, and what this means for Negative Atmosphere.
Following the release of SNOTROCKET™, we have had to review the company’s current position, ongoing obligations, and the level of development we can responsibly support.
As a result, Sunscorched has had to reduce from a 13-person team to a skeletal operating structure.
Sunscorched is not closing, but it will continue in a much smaller form: maintaining our existing IP, supporting released titles where we can and exploring smaller games that can be built sustainably.
This is devastating, and it is not a reflection of the talent, effort, or commitment of the people affected. The team gave everything to this studio, and they deserved a better outcome.
We also want to be clear about Negative Atmosphere.
Negative Atmosphere is not cancelled in the sense that we are saying it will never happen.
We still care deeply about the world, the tone, the ideas, and what we wanted it to become.
But Negative Atmosphere is not currently something Sunscorched can move forward as a standalone production.
Negative Atmosphere, as we envisioned it, was never something we could “just build” safely.
The version people were excited for was a large, expensive, high-risk sci-fi horror game. Making that properly would have required either the right publishing or funding partner, or a much stronger financial base than we ever had.
That is why we explored other routes.
For years, we tried to find a path towards it. We pitched to publishers, explored funding routes, and built games that could help support our larger ambitions.
RATSHAKER™ and the Rat-CHAN DLC were unexpected, game-jam-born successes that genuinely carried the studio for a time, but they were never the plan.
MALPRAXIS™, formerly Emergency Room, was built as its own released game within the same wider universe as Negative Atmosphere.
It let us explore parts of that world, test ideas at a smaller scale, and better understand what a future Negative Atmosphere project might realistically need to become.
SNOTROCKET™ was another attempt to build something more immediate, social, and sustainable.
In the end, despite pursuing every realistic route available to us, none of those routes gave us the financial backing needed to move Negative Atmosphere forward.
For Negative Atmosphere to return, we would need either the right publisher or funding partner, or enough stability from smaller games to build up a reserve and come back to it responsibly.
And if it does come back, it will almost certainly need to be a simpler, more focused version of the original idea.
We hope that, one day, we might be able to do what games like ROUTINE eventually did: find a way back, reshape the project around what is actually possible, and share some version of what we made in a playable form.
But we cannot promise that right now.
We are sorry we could not communicate all of this sooner.
The situation kept changing, and we were still trying to find a route through it.
We did not want to make a public statement that was incomplete, misleading, or unfair to the people affected.
That does not make the silence feel better.
If you feel dragged along or let down, we are genuinely sorry.
We are devastated too.
Negative Atmosphere will not be erased, but it also cannot remain framed as something actively moving towards release in the background.
Thank you to everyone who has cared about Negative Atmosphere for so long.
Calvin Parsons
Founder @ Sunscorched Studios