Jacksepticeye's Unannounced Soma Animated Show Falls Apart Unexpectedly

YouTuber Jacksepticeye, whose real name is Seán William McLoughlin, recently shared his disappointment over the cancellation of a Soma animated show he had been working on for a year. In a video titled 'A Bad Month,' Jacksepticeye revealed the project's existence and its unfortunate end, leaving him "quite upset."

Soma, a critically acclaimed survival horror science fiction video game developed by Frictional Games, was released in 2015. Jacksepticeye, a fan of the game, streamed it extensively upon its release and often cites it as one of his top favorites. His passion for Soma led him to collaborate with the developers for a year to bring an animated show to life.

In his video, Jacksepticeye discussed the challenges he faced creatively, mentioning several projects that either got canceled or didn't progress as hoped. He expressed his excitement about the Soma animated show, stating, "I had a very large creative project that I was very excited to do... I was planning to do a Soma animated show. Because I love Soma — Soma is top five, top 10 at least video games of all time for me. I absolutely love that game. It has one of the best stories ever in a video game."

Despite the enthusiasm and readiness to go into full production, the project abruptly fell apart when an unnamed party decided to take it in a "different direction." Jacksepticeye chose not to delve into specifics due to his upset over the situation, saying, "We were making really great progress on that, and then it all just fell apart out of nowhere... I’m not going to go into too many of the specifics of what happened, because I’m quite upset about what actually went down."

The cancellation significantly impacted Jacksepticeye's plans for 2025, as he had structured his year around the project. He explained, "I had planned a lot of my year around it... So all of my plans for the year are flipped upside down. Now what is the priority? What am I doing? I don’t know. I’ve had so many calls over the last couple of weeks. It’s been a lot. It’s been a tough month. I took time off and did all that and I have nothing at the end of it. It’s so frustrating. I hate that."

Following Soma, Frictional Games released two more Amnesia titles: Amnesia: Rebirth in 2020 and Amnesia: The Bunker in 2023. In July 2023, Frictional's creative director Thomas Grip mentioned the company's intention to shift focus from horror to explore other emotional qualities in their games. Grip emphasized the importance of immersive experiences, stating, "While all of our games have been horror in some way, what we really try to do is to get a kind of playable immersion... Horror games naturally are where emotions are front and centre. Games really excel at this. However, we are also exploring themes outside of making things spooky."