Every Texas Chain Saw Massacre game: 9 in 43 years, and is the 2023 one shutting down?

Leatherface has turned up in games nine times, counting only official appearances: an Atari 2600 cartridge in 1983, a 2006 phone game, a fighter in Mortal Kombat X, a killer in Dead by Daylight, cosmetics in Call of Duty, Rocket League and Fortnite, a pinball table, and the big The Texas Chain Saw Massacre from 2023. Only three of those are standalone Texas Chain Saw Massacre games.

The question people actually search about the 2023 game is whether it's shutting down. Short answer: no. Gun Interactive stopped updating it in May 2025, but it never pulled it from sale, the servers are still running, and in August 2026 two new editions even showed up on the Xbox and PlayStation stores. The details, the player numbers and every other Leatherface game are below, in order.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Atari 2600, 1983: the first villain you could play

The first game came out in 1983 from Wizard Video Games, the games arm of the Wizard Video label. The same label put out Halloween for the Atari that year, which we covered in our rundown of every Michael Myers game. The developer was Ed Salvo's VSS, Inc., staffed by former Games by Apollo programmers.

You play Leatherface. He runs around a field with a chainsaw catching trespassers, while fences, wheelchairs and cow skulls get in the way. Each victim is worth 1,000 points, every 5,000 points tops up your fuel, and when the fuel runs out you lose a life. It sounds like a joke, but Guinness World Records still lists it as the first video game that let you play as the villain.

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Stores weren't impressed. According to AtariAge, plenty of retailers refused to stock it, others kept it behind the counter away from kids, and Wizard Video got protests from community groups. It sold poorly, though nobody has real numbers. AtariAge now rates the cartridge as very rare, so collectors are the only option.

2006 and 2016: a HeroCraft phone game and a Mortal Kombat X fighter

The next game took 23 years, and it was for feature phones. In autumn 2006 HeroCraft and MindMatics released Texas Chainsaw Massacre under a New Line Cinema licence. The hero was Thomas Hewitt, the Leatherface of the 2003 remake, and the levels went through a desert, a grim house and a bloody farm. It launched alongside a Friday the 13th phone game. There's nowhere to play it today.

The real comeback came in 2016. NetherRealm announced Leatherface for Mortal Kombat X on December 3, 2015, and on March 1, 2016 he arrived in Kombat Pack 2 with the Xenomorph, Triborg and Bo' Rai Cho. His own fatalities, brutalities and a chainsaw X-ray, the full package. He reached PC on October 4, 2016 with Mortal Kombat XL, and in 2018 he joined the mobile Mortal Kombat too.

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This is still Leatherface's best-reviewed appearance: Mortal Kombat X itself sits at 86 on Xbox One and 83 on PS4 on Metacritic. And you can still buy it: the standalone Leatherface DLC is $4.99 on Steam with 87 percent positive reviews, and the base game is $19.99.

Dead by Daylight, 2017, plus outfits in Call of Duty, Rocket League and Fortnite

On September 14, 2017 Leatherface joined Dead by Daylight as The Cannibal. It wasn't a full chapter, just the killer, with no survivor and no map: a chainsaw and a sledgehammer. In the game's lore the Entity takes him shortly after Sally escapes at the end of the 1974 film.

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The DLC is still on sale for $4.99, with 85 percent positive Steam reviews out of 2,210. There was one ugly episode. In January 2022, as IGN reported, Behaviour removed The Cannibal's masks made from survivors' faces after the mask of Claudette, a Black survivor, started being used for harassment. Our Dead by Daylight killer guide has every killer with dates.

The other guest spots are outfits and decals, where Leatherface doesn't play himself, he just lends his look.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, 2023: a million players in a day

The big game was announced at The Game Awards on December 9, 2021 and released on August 18, 2023 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series, day one on Game Pass. Sumo Nottingham developed it, Gun Interactive published, the same Gun behind Friday the 13th: The Game. From February 2024, Black Tower Studios handled support.

It's three versus four. Four victims start in the basement and look for a way out, while three members of the Family hunt them and feed their blood to Grandpa, whose scream reveals anyone running. Leatherface is the odd one: he starts in the basement with the victims and cuts through barriers with his saw. It's set in April 1973, five months before the film.

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Leatherface moves like Kane Hodder, the Jason actor from Friday the 13th, who did his motion capture, while Lex Lang provides the voice. The Hitchhiker is voiced by Edwin Neal, who played him in the 1974 film. Bill Moseley and Skeet Ulrich joined the cast in December 2024. Gun got the rights straight from co-writer Kim Henkel, and in 2023 creative director Ronnie Hobbs told TechRadar the Friday the 13th rights mess wouldn't repeat here.

The launch was loud: TrueAchievements reported a million players in the first 24 hours across all platforms, and the Steam peak hit 17,141. Critics liked it without loving it: 77 on Xbox Series, 72 on PC and 71 on PS5 on Metacritic, with a 9/10 from GameSpot and a 6/10 from IGN. How close it is to the film, Gun showed itself:

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Is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre shutting down? What's actually going on

On May 13, 2025 Gun announced the game was "fully realized" and would get no more content or support: after the May patch there would be no new DLC, no balance updates and no bug fixes. The studio also said separately that the game was not being delisted. The reason given was vague, a natural creative end.

Next came a plan to move matchmaking to peer-to-peer instead of servers. That didn't happen. In a post on the game's site Gun said the switch would hurt stability and performance, so it was cancelled and the game stays on the May 22, 2025 patch build. In other words, the official servers are still running. As of October 14, 2026 nobody has announced a server shutdown or a delisting.

People still play it. SteamCharts showed 133 players on Steam on October 14, and the monthly average climbed to 532 in August 2026. The new editions probably helped: on August 17 the Xbox and PlayStation stores added a Family Edition for $29.99 (the game plus three characters) and a Friends and Family Edition for $49.99 (the game plus seven characters). There was no press about them, just store listings. The base game is $14.99 on Steam and Xbox, down from $39.99 at launch, and Gun cut it permanently to $19.99 in September 2024.

There are 52 DLC items on Steam. Characters are $9.99 each (Nancy, Danny, Virginia, Hands, Maria, Bones, Wyatt), Greg Nicotero's Leatherface outfit is $15.99, and my favorite is the 2003 remake Leatherface for $0.99. The game itself sits at 66 percent positive out of 23,795 Steam reviews. My view is simple: if you want the 1974 film as a game, it's still worth $14.99, just don't expect anyone to fix the bugs.

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Chainsaw pinball, 2024

On June 6, 2024 Zen Studios released Texas Chainsaw Massacre Pinball for its horror pinball platform Pinball M, now called Pinball FX Midnight. You play Leatherface terrorizing the newcomers, and the final mode has you hunting the last survivors. It's on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series and Switch. The copyright on the table's page belongs to Legendary, the studio behind the newer films, so it's probably not based on the 1974 original.

On Steam the table is $5.49 with 19 positive reviews out of 21. That's not many reviews, and only two of them are negative.

Every Leatherface game in one table

What's not on the list. Leatherface isn't in GTA San Andreas, that's an old myth. Critics often call Resident Evil 4's chainsaw-wielding Dr. Salvador and Resident Evil 7's Baker family heirs of the film, but Capcom never confirmed it, so they're not in the table. I also couldn't find him in Black Ops 6 or 7, Funko Fusion or RetroRealms.

Scores: he does better as a guest than at home

A caveat first: for guest spots the chart shows the score of the whole host game, not of Leatherface. Mortal Kombat X would have been praised without him. Still, the line tells you something: his own 2023 game lands at Dead by Daylight's level with critics, not above it.

With players the gap is wider. Leatherface DLC in other people's games holds 85 to 90 percent, while the big game about him gets 66. And since May 2025 nobody is going to patch it.

What to play today

The 1983 Atari cartridge is for collectors. And if you're curious how the same Gun Interactive lost the rights to another big game, see every Jason Voorhees game.

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