Outlast Testers Reportedly Ran Out of the Office to Cry and Refused to Return

Red Barrels’ horror game Outlast hit some people hard enough that they quit or left the studio in tears. Phillipe Morin recently talked to GamesSpot about the development of the 2013 game.

Outlast became a big hit. It was the debut project of Red Barrels, whose team then consisted of just 10 people.

The developers were making a scary game, and Outlast had a strong effect on some people. During job interviews, they told candidates about the content so it wouldn’t come as a shock. Even that approach did not rule out incidents:

We had a case where a person started on Monday and quit by Thursday. He knew about the cruelty and violence, but he had reservations about other issues related to religion. He felt uncomfortable, so he had to leave.

Outlast was so scary that testers ran out of the office to cry and refused to come back — Image source: Red Barrels

Another incident happened during Outlast playtests. Morin recalled: “I remember there was a playtest, and one person literally ran out of the studio after a couple of hours to go cry outside.” According to Morin, that woman never came back, and she “wasn’t the only one.”

The horror franchise is still growing. The developers are currently releasing updates and DLC for The Outlast Trials, which recently set a new peak concurrent player record on Steam.

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