Dead Space creator Glen Schofield is retiring after 35 years
Schofield’s final game, The Callisto Protocol, was released in 2022
Glen Schofield, the creator of Dead Space and The Callisto Protocol, has announced his retirement from “the day-to-day work” of developing video games.
In a video posted to LinkedIn, Schofield thanked his family and friends, as well as his fans. “You supported me, you invited my team’s games into your homes, you told me when I was good and you told me when I wasn’t so good, but you made me better,” he said.
Schofield’s career began in 1991, where he got his start on licensed games, such as Barbie: Game Girl, before a stint at THQ. He’d go on to work on licensed games for much of the 1990s and the early 2000s, including such movie tie-ins as The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King for EA.
Schofield came to prominence for most players with Dead Space, and his work on the Call of Duty series.
“I had a front-row seat to one of the greatest creative explosions in history,” Schofield said in his retirement video.
“To EA, thank you for letting me make Dead Space, Activision, you gave me the keys to three Call of Duty games, and I really appreciate your trust.”
He added: “This is an amazing industry, with so many talented people, and I know times are tough right now, but the future is really, really bright. I wish you all, the next generation of game makers, the best of luck.”
Schofield’s final game, The Callisto Protocol, was, in many ways, a spiritual successor to the Dead Space franchise.
The Callisto Protocol received mixed reviews when it was released in December 2022, a month before EA released a critically acclaimed Dead Space remake, and reportedly failed to meet Krafton’s sales expectations. Schofield left Striking Distance in September 2023.
In 2025, Schofield revealed that he was struggling to find funding for his next project, citing difficulties across the games industry as developers struggle for backing.
At the time, he said that he felt that AAA development “feels like it’s a long ways away” for him, and that he would go back to making art.
Last year, Schofield said that he was “100% behind AI,” in game development, comparing worries over the technology eliminating jobs to the motion capture or Photoshop.
“I remember when motion capture was going to take jobs away. I look at animation departments now, it could be 30 people. It always raises the bar. It’s raising it now for me when I’m coming up with ideas and worlds. I wish I could predict what jobs [will come out of it]. I hear people going, we’re going to want prompt engineers. And we probably will.”
He went on to say, “I am 100% behind AI.”
“I’ve been there for a lot of these [moments]. I was there for the beginning of the internet when they said everyone would have a website. And now everybody does. AI is here, just work with it.”
