Red Barrels Co-Founder Recalls Playtester Fleeing Studio And Never Returning
Morin's account puts the studio's gore problem on the hiring and playtesting side, not the game design side: Red Barrels says it screens applicants in interviews because the work itself can end a run, whether a tester's or an employee's.
Reporting from 1 source: Game Spark.
Philippe Morin, co-founder of Outlast studio Red Barrels, told GameSpot that a past playtest ended when one participant ran out of the studio crying and never came back. Morin tied the series' gore to personal preference rather than calculated trend-chasing, and said the studio vets applicants on the content they will handle. He also recalled a hire who quit on the Thursday of their first week.
Morin described the walkout as a gradual reaction. The participant lasted a few hours into the playtest before leaving, he said, and then never returned. He gave the account to GameSpot as part of a look back at the series, which began with Outlast on Steam in 2013 and continued with Outlast 2 in 2017 and The Outlast Trials in 2024.
On the violence itself, Morin said the trend question missed. Asked whether films such as SAW shaped the games, he said the answer was personal preference, not calculation. The studio's own line, as he recalled it, was that a horror game is going to be grotesque anyway. The scriptwriter's version: there is no such thing as too much blood.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.