Jacksepticeye's Secret Soma Animated Show Project Collapses Unexpectedly

YouTuber Jacksepticeye, whose real name is Seán William McLoughlin, recently shared a disheartening update in his video titled 'A Bad Month.' He revealed that a project he had been deeply invested in—a Soma animated show—had fallen through, leaving him feeling "quite upset."

Soma, the survival horror science fiction video game developed by Frictional Games, was released in 2015 to widespread critical acclaim. Jacksepticeye, who has streamed the game extensively and often cites it as one of his top favorites, had been working on turning this beloved game into an animated series.

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

In his video, Jacksepticeye discussed the challenges he faced during a creatively challenging period, marked by the cancellation or stalling of various projects. 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."

Jacksepticeye had been in discussions with the developers for a year and was on the brink of entering full production. He had even delayed playing the game in one video to align with the show's announcement. However, the project abruptly fell apart when an unnamed party decided to take it "in a different direction." This sudden shift left Jacksepticeye deeply upset and reluctant to delve into specifics.

"We were making really great progress on that, and then it all just fell apart out of nowhere," he explained. "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 content. "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."

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 that the company was looking to shift its focus away from horror to explore other emotional themes in their games. "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."