New Report Reveals Number of Cloud Chamber Layoffs, Confirms Delay of Next BioShock Game

A report by Bloomberg published on Aug. 21, 2025, revealed that over 80 jobs were cut as part of Cloud Chamber’s restructuring on Tuesday. The studio had around 250 employees before the layoffs, which means that approximately a third of the studio was eliminated in just a single day.

Additionally, the report also revealed that the next BioShock game will be delayed from its supposed late 2026 or early 2027 release. When Bloomberg asked for a comment, a spokesperson from 2K Games, the publisher of BioShock games, said, “We’ve made the decision with studio leadership to rework certain aspects that are core to a BioShock game, and in doing so are reducing the size of the development team to focus on this work and give the game more time in development.”

Bloomberg called the BioShock game “one of the longest-running productions in the video-game industry,” pointing out that the game has been in development for more than a decade across multiple studios.

The franchise seems to be in dire straits, as a report earlier this month, also from Bloomberg, revealed that a remake of the first BioShock game was allegedly shelved earlier this year.

Recently, the former general manager of Diablo over at Blizzard, Rod Fergusson, announced that he’s joining Cloud Chamber as the new head of the BioShock franchise. This isn’t Fergusson’s first encounter with the game, as he previously joined Irrational, the studio behind BioShock: Infinite.

Fergusson had developed a reputation as a “closer” even before joining Irrational, according to a Polygon article published in 2021 talking about BioShock: Infinite’s development hell. After shipping out the game in 2013, he left the studio.