In late July 2017, The Chinese Room's directors, Dan Pinchbeck and Jessica Curry, laid off the entire staff—at that point eight people—and ditched their Brighton office for home. They cited the lack of ability to pay their staff during the interim between projects as the reason for the closure, and expressed their intentions that the studio itself was still running without the development team, with Pinchbeck and Curry working on prototyping and acquiring funds on their own time. The company released a VR title,
So Let Us Melt, for Google Daydream in September, which was the final project of the former studio. At the time, Pinchbeck, Curry, and Andrew Crawshaw were working alone on the studio's next project,
13th Interior, which was to push away from the "walking simulator" model the studio had been known for.
[10]
In August 2018, Sumo Group, the parent company of
Sumo Digital, acquired The Chinese Room for £2.2 million, making it the fourth UK-based studio under Sumo Digital. Co-founder Pinchbeck took the role of creative director for The Chinese Room, while Curry continued as an independent composer for the studio. Pinchbeck described the acquisition as "the end of a chapter" for the studio as they determined their next project.
[11] From late summer 2018, The Chinese Room began re-staffing, adding veteran developers Ed Daly as studio director and John McCormack as art director.
