Media Molecule

Media Molecule
Information
Industry	Video games
Founded	4 January 2006
Founder	Mark Healey, Alex Evans, Kareem Ettouney, David Smith
Headquarters	Guildford, Surrey, England
Notable Personnel	Siobhan Reddy (studio director, 2021), John Beech (creative director, from 2023)
Products	LittleBigPlanet, LittleBigPlanet 2, Tearaway, Tearaway Unfolded, Dreams
Parent	Sony Interactive Entertainment (since 2010)
Website	https://www.mediamolecule.com

Media Molecule is a British video game developer based in Guildford, Surrey, and a studio of Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was founded in 2006 by Mark Healey, Alex Evans, Kareem Ettouney and David Smith, who had met while working at Lionhead Studios. The studio made LittleBigPlanet, LittleBigPlanet 2, Tearaway, Tearaway Unfolded and Dreams. Sony Computer Entertainment bought the company in March 2010.

The studio's work in virtual reality is the PlayStation VR mode of Dreams, a free update released on 22 July 2020. It lets players play community creations in VR and sculpt and build inside the headset with PlayStation Move controllers. Media Molecule ended live support for Dreams after 1 September 2023 and said it was working on a new project. As of October 2026 that project has not been announced.

Reviewed 15 October 2026. Founding story, Sony acquisition terms, release dates of LittleBigPlanet, LittleBigPlanet 2, Tearaway, Tearaway Unfolded and Dreams, SIGGRAPH 2015 abstract, BAFTA awards, co-founder departures, layoffs, end of Dreams live support, PS VR update contents and all VR-related quotes, checked against each cited source. About review dates.

History

Founding and LittleBigPlanet

The four founders met while working at Lionhead Studios. With help from Chris Lee, described by the studio as "the man with the business plan", they were soon joined by Siobhan Reddy, Anton Kirczenow and Francis Pang. In March 2006 the team moved into its first office, a small space above a bathroom shop in Guildford, where the character Sackboy was created. LittleBigPlanet was announced at the Game Developers Conference the following year.

LittleBigPlanet was a PlayStation 3 game built around levels made and shared by players. Its launch in October 2008 was postponed shortly before release after Sony found that a licensed music track contained two expressions from the Qur'an. Media Molecule said it had finished a day-one patch to remove the material, but Sony chose to replace the discs, and copies already in shops were recalled. The game was rescheduled for the week of 27 October 2008 in North America and the week of 3 November 2008 in Europe, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand.

Acquisition by Sony

On 2 March 2010, Sony Computer Entertainment announced that it had acquired Media Molecule and that the studio would join SCE Worldwide Studios. The announcement described the deal as formalising the existing exclusive relationship between the two companies. Sony said LittleBigPlanet had sold millions of copies, that players had made more than 2 million levels, and that the game had won more than 90 awards, including two BAFTAs and eight AIAS Interactive Achievement Awards. The studio describes itself as part of the PlayStation Studios family.

LittleBigPlanet 2 was delayed from late 2010 to January 2011; Sony announced a North American release date of 18 January 2011. The studio then made Tearaway, a papercraft adventure for the PlayStation Vita, whose release was moved from mid-October to 22 November 2013 because the team needed more time to finish it. An expanded version for PlayStation 4, Tearaway Unfolded, was dated for release across Europe on 9 September 2015 (11 September in the UK).

Dreams

Dreams was announced at E3 on 15 June 2015. At SIGGRAPH 2015, co-founder Alex Evans gave a talk in the Advances in Real-Time Rendering course on the renderers the team had tried for the game. According to the abstract, Dreams ran almost entirely on the PS4's compute units with no triangles: scenes were described as CSG trees, evaluated into high-resolution signed distance fields, from which dense multi-resolution point clouds were generated. The game entered early access on 16 April 2019 and was fully released on 14 February 2020. It won the Technical Achievement award at the 2021 BAFTA Games Awards. BAFTA also announced that studio director Siobhan Reddy would receive its Fellowship, its highest honour for an individual, at the same ceremony on 25 March 2021.

Leadership changes and new project

By August 2025 all four co-founders had announced their departures. Alex Evans announced in September 2020 that he was stepping back from game development. In December 2022 the studio said that co-founder and art director Kareem Ettouney would leave in early 2023. Mark Healey, the director of Dreams, announced his departure in April 2023 after 17 years. In May 2023 the studio named John Beech, who had been its lead designer and had first been recruited from the LittleBigPlanet creator community, as creative director. Co-founder David Smith announced in August 2025 that he was leaving to focus on personal creative projects.

On 11 April 2023 Media Molecule announced that it would end live support for Dreams after 1 September 2023 to concentrate on a new project, which it said was "not Dreams 2, or the Dreams IP." In October 2023 the studio confirmed that it had begun a consultation process for staff in certain departments, citing "significant strategic changes during the past year" including the shift from Dreams to the new project. In March 2024 it said that its Dreams curation team was among the last staff affected, and that there were no plans to take Dreams offline. A Sony job listing reported in April 2024 referred to "Mm's new IP". The studio has not officially revealed the game as of October 2026.

Games

Title	Year	Platform	Notes
LittleBigPlanet	2008	PlayStation 3	Release postponed in October 2008 and discs replaced
LittleBigPlanet 2	2011	PlayStation 3	North American release 18 January 2011
Tearaway	2013	PlayStation Vita	Release moved from mid-October to 22 November 2013
Tearaway Unfolded	2015	PlayStation 4	European release date 9 September 2015 (11 September in the UK)
Dreams	2020	PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR	Early access 2019; full release 14 February 2020; PlayStation VR update 22 July 2020

XR work

Virtual reality support for Dreams took several years to arrive. In August 2017, UploadVR reported that Siobhan Reddy had told Rolling Stone that PlayStation VR support was still planned; she called it "a total no-brainer for us to do that and to support it." At the London Games Festival in April 2018, Alex Evans said an early build of VR support was already working, but that the team did not know when it would ship and that it might not be ready on day one. He said the studio was "being coy" because "VR's hard and it hasn't been our focus." VR was left out of the 2019 early access release; Reddy wrote that "Dreams VR is not included in the initial Early Access offering."

The PlayStation VR update was announced at the DreamsCom showcase and released free on 22 July 2020. It added DreamShaping tutorials and gadgets for VR creation, comfort options (comfort mode, vignette strength and a static sky), the shooting game Box Blaster with its own creation kit, and the Inside the Box Gallery of sculptures and art by the studio's staff. Creators can mark whether a creation is playable in VR, and players can give VR content a comfort rating. Media Molecule described sculpting with PlayStation Move controllers as "a very one-to-one experience."

UploadVR reviewed the VR mode in August 2020 and gave it four out of five stars. Jamie Feltham praised the best community creations, but wrote that many existing non-VR creations with VR enabled were "strangely scaled", that the Move controls were "plagued by the confusing button layout", and that "the DualShock 4 surprisingly remains the best way to create in Dreams."

The studio did not bring Dreams to the PlayStation VR2. Its April 2023 support update said the remaining planned releases did not include multiplayer or support for the PlayStation 5, PlayStation VR2 or 3D printing.

See also

• Dreams
• Sony Interactive Entertainment
• London Studio
• List of PlayStation VR games