"I was forced to ship the game. I'm mad at myself, there's no doubt. I was so stunned by that decision, because we had fucking Covid. A million people died in America. I lost one of my best friends. Every single month, four to six people in my company were getting sick.
"There were times our small team in Spain was shut down; it goes through a small place like that and you lose your rendering team for a while. The main thing you're concerned about, not that you aren't normally, is the health of your team. Making a game just became secondary because this is about life. This is about humanity," via Gameindustry.biz.
Schofield has had a storied career in the games industry. He was the creator and executive producer of Dead Space, but he also worked as a producer on three Call of Duty games, as well as Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Cain.
The Callisto Protocol, developed under Krafton by Striking Distance studios, failed to meet some sky-high expectations after Krafton sank $100 million into the thing. In terms of critical reception, it was fairly middling, although we did give it a very decent 79 in our The Callisto Protocol review.
One of the major things to sink it, though? Framerate stuttering, which led to some brutal negative reviews at launch. It is, to Schofield's credit, the sort of thing that likely could've been ironed out with a few more months of development work. Or alternatively, not being hit by the horrors of a global pandemic midway through development.
This led to layoffs at the studio in August 2023, followed by a further wave in February 2025. Eventually, Schofield retired from videogames entirely in 2026 after his next project couldn't secure funding, commenting that "maybe I've directed my last game."
Later in the Gamesindustry.biz interview, Schofield remarks: "[Krafton] thought Callisto was a complete failure. What they didn't know while all they were doing was complaining, we were doing patches. I waited until I finished all the DLC and put out 86 patches.
"That was a lot of fucking work. Every day you're going in, you're making changes. Some are little, others are massive. That was all to get it back to where it needed to be." The game did release said patches and updates—both to fix the stuttering, and to add new chapters to its story. But alas, it clearly wasn't enough.
From the creators of Edge: A free weekly videogame industry newsletter, featuring in-depth news, expert analysis and exclusive interviews
Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.