Petition Demands Until Dawn Film Credits Game Writers

Former PlayStation narrative director Kim MacAskill is on a mission: she wants the original Until Dawn game writers properly credited in the new movie adaptation.

After the Until Dawn movie premiered on April 25th and only vaguely credited the game without naming individuals, MacAskill launched a petition demanding that the team behind the iconic game be acknowledged.

At the time of writing, the petition has racked up 167 signatures, and the conversation around developer recognition in film adaptations is heating up fast.

What’s Until Dawn Anyway?

If you somehow missed it, Until Dawn is a 2015 interactive horror game developed by Supermassive Games for the PlayStation 4. It’s basically a playable teen slasher film where your choices mean the difference between life and death for a group of stranded friends. Think Scream meets Heavy Rain.

The game was a sleeper hit. It captured players with its cinematic storytelling, choice-driven gameplay, and horror movie clichés, brought to life by an actual Hollywood cast, including Hayden Panettiere and Rami Malek. In 2024, Until Dawn got a full PS5 remake, complete with visual upgrades and a new ending teasing a possible sequel.

So, What’s the Issue With the Movie?

The new Until Dawn movie doesn’t directly adapt the game’s plot or characters. Instead, it spins a new horror story under the same umbrella brand, which is fine — until you hit the credits.

At the end of the movie, there’s a simple note that it’s "based on the Sony game" — but no mention of the individuals who created the original story, atmosphere, and world that inspired the film.

Kim MacAskill, speaking on LinkedIn, slammed this move hard:

"You just wrapped it as 'based on the Sony game'. No mention of the leading game dev(s) who created this ICONIC game you're clearly proud of."

She added:

"The world DESERVES to know their names."

MacAskill clarified that while she wasn’t involved in Until Dawn herself, her own experience as a former PlayStation creative (and the broader industry's lack of respect for salaried developers) pushed her to speak out.

How Common Is This?

Turns out, this situation is messy — but not unique.

Hollywood's standard practices around adaptations are... not super friendly to game writers. Screenwriter C. Robert Cargill (Doctor Strange, Sinister) explained:

"Because the Guild doesn't know who to ascribe credit in general, they don't have a hard and fast rule about how to do that."

Meaning: unless a game's original writers negotiate to be consultants on a movie adaptation (like Neil Druckmann did with The Last of Us TV series), they often get left out. Even if their work heavily influences the adaptation.

In this case, Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, who wrote the Until Dawn game, said they weren’t surprised to be left out:

"I thought somebody would have bothered to throw in our names, even during the end credits," Fessenden told The Hollywood Reporter. "But there's no courtesy in show biz."

Oof.

How Good Are Game-to-Screen Adaptations?

In the spirit of keeping things honest, here's a quick table comparing some notable game adaptations by their reception:

Yeah, it’s a wild range. (Until Dawn's film adaptation is somewhere in the "meh" zone based on early scores.)

Ideas Workshop

There's a bigger conversation here that goes way beyond Until Dawn.

Video games are increasingly where the best storytelling happens — and Hollywood knows it. But if adaptations keep skipping the part where they actually honour the original writers, it sends a pretty clear message:

"Thanks for the ideas, now step aside."

It’s even more brutal when you realize that game developers, especially salaried ones, usually have very little control or ownership of their work.

They create worlds, characters, and stories that millions love — and then get treated like invisible background noise when that work gets turned into a blockbuster.

MacAskill’s petition isn't just about a few missing names in the credits. It’s about demanding basic respect for the people who made these worlds possible in the first place.

Credit matters!

The Until Dawn movie isn’t a disaster, but it does bring up an uncomfortable truth: game developers still get the short end of the stick when it comes to recognition.

Not just because it feels good, but because it acknowledges the time, passion, and creativity poured into these stories long before a film crew ever showed up.

Hopefully, conversations like this — and petitions like MacAskill's — will push studios to rethink how they credit the creators behind the IP they’re cashing in on.

At the very least, the world deserves to know the names behind the horrors they love.