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 game developed by Frictional Games, was released in 2015. Jacksepticeye, a fan of the game, had streamed it extensively and often cites it as one of his top favorites. His passion for Soma fueled his excitement for the animated show, which he had planned to announce to his audience.

In the video, Jacksepticeye discussed the challenges he faced creatively, with several projects either being canceled or not progressing as hoped. He expressed his frustration over the lack of content creation and then disclosed the Soma animated show project.

“I had a very large creative project that I was very excited to do, and — I don’t actually know if I’m allowed to say what it is — I’m just going to say what it is, and then if I’m not allowed to say it then this next part won’t be in it,” he said.

“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.

“And I was so excited to do that. We’ve been talking to the developers for like a year, talking about that, and we were ready to go into full production on that. And I was so excited, and I really wanted to announce that to people, and to talk about it and get really stuck in and share it.

“Because I wanted to play the game all in one video. And I was like, okay, I’ll hold off on that then till we can announce that we’re doing it. So that’s why I haven’t done it yet.”

Jacksepticeye explained that the project fell apart suddenly after an unnamed party decided to take it in a "different direction." He chose not to delve into the specifics due to his emotional response to the situation.

“We were making really great progress on that, and then it all just fell apart out of nowhere,” he said.

“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. But, it’s more of a, ‘we’re going in a different direction,’ kinda vibe. And that really upset me.”

Jacksepticeye did not disclose the identities of the other parties involved. IGN has reached out to Frictional Games for a comment on the matter.

The cancellation of the Soma animated show significantly disrupted Jacksepticeye's plans for 2025, leaving him uncertain about his priorities and future projects.

“I had planned a lot of my year around it. I was like, you know what? I won’t be able to upload as much because I’ll be focusing everything I have into that. But at least I’ll have a really cool creative thing to show off. And I’ll have something for you and we can talk about it and share it and be part of this thing together and have fun with it. And then it all fell apart.

“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, after the release of Amnesia: The Bunker, Frictional's creative director Thomas Grip mentioned the company's intention to shift focus away from horror games to explore other emotional qualities in their future projects.

"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," Grip said.

"We want to give the player some sort of immersive fantasy, be that being a [World War 1] soldier trapped in a bunker or a robot stuck at the bottom of the ocean.

"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."