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 his latest video titled "A Bad Month," Jacksepticeye disclosed the project's collapse, which has left him "quite upset."

Soma, developed by Frictional Games, the creators of the Amnesia series, is a critically acclaimed survival horror sci-fi game released in 2015. Jacksepticeye has long been a fan of the game, often citing it as one of his top favorites and streaming it extensively upon its launch.

Jacksepticeye was working on a Soma animated show. Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for QTCinderella.

In the video, Jacksepticeye discussed the challenging creative period he has been experiencing, marked by several project cancellations and delays. He expressed his frustration over his recent lack of content creation and then revealed the specifics of 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 explained. "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."

Jacksepticeye mentioned that he had been in talks with the game's developers for a year and was ready to move into full production. He had planned to hold off on playing the game in one video until the animated show could be announced, which is why he hadn't completed it yet.

However, the project fell apart unexpectedly when an unnamed party decided to take it "in a different direction." Jacksepticeye chose not to delve into the specifics, citing his upset over 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."

The cancellation has 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 entries in the Amnesia series: Amnesia: Rebirth in 2020 and Amnesia: The Bunker in 2023. In July 2023, Frictional's creative director Thomas Grip mentioned the studio'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 stated. "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."