Steel Wool Studios
- Open roles
- 0
- Founded
- 2012
- Employees
- 51-200
- Offices
- 1
About Steel Wool Studios
Steel Wool Studios is an independent video game developer and publisher based in Oakland, California. Its work spans narrative adventures, atmospheric horror, virtual reality and interactive enterprise applications. The studio combines game design and software engineering with cinematic animation, lighting and storytelling techniques, drawing on its founding team's experience in film, games and technology.
Founded in 2012 as Steel Wool Games, the company initially developed mobile and PC games. Its early releases included Flyhunter Origins, a platform adventure published with Ripstone in 2014. As commercial virtual reality hardware emerged, the studio expanded into room-scale experiences and adopted the public name Steel Wool Studios in 2016.
Games and virtual reality
The studio's early VR projects explored several forms of interaction: turn-based strategy in Quar: Battle for Gate 18, physics puzzles in Bounce and planetary simulation in Mars Odyssey. These projects formed part of its development work in spatial computing and immersive gameplay.
Steel Wool began collaborating with Scott Cawthon in 2018 to bring Five Nights at Freddy's into virtual reality. That collaboration produced Help Wanted in 2019 and continued through Security Breach, its RUIN expansion, Help Wanted 2 and Secret of the Mimic. Its wider horror portfolio includes Hello Neighbor VR: Search and Rescue, developed with tinyBuild.
Development capabilities
Steel Wool's capabilities cover full-cycle game development, character modeling and rigging, visual effects, cinematic animation, co-development and platform porting. Its engineering work supports both VR and conventional screen-based games across PC, console and standalone headset platforms, including PlayStation, Meta Quest, Nintendo Switch and Xbox.
Beyond entertainment, the studio develops enterprise applications for virtual training and medical therapy. This work extends its interactive development capabilities into healthcare and industrial simulation. Steel Wool operates with a fully remote workforce across the United States while maintaining Oakland as its corporate home.
More about Steel Wool Studios
Founders and leadership
The five founders were Sequoia Blankenship, Andrew Dayton, Jonathan Hoffman, Joshua Qualtieri and Jason Topolski. Their professional backgrounds included Pixar Animation Studios, Lucasfilm, Midway Games, Intel and Telltale Games.
The research identifies Andrew Dayton as Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and Jason “JTop” Topolski as Co-Founder and Creative Director. Other listed leaders are Stewart Johnston, Head of Engineering; Chase Hernandez, Executive Producer; Brian Freyermuth, Design Director and VO Director; and Evan Lampi, Creative Director.
Investment milestone
In August 2016, HTC Corporation invested $5 million in a Series A funding round to advance the studio's VR development pipeline.
Notable credits
12 creditsOffices
Where Steel Wool Studios is based
- Oakland, California, United States
Oakland office
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