Twenty developers have claimed they’ve been deliberately left off the credits for Striking Distance Studios’ The Callisto Protocol.
The developers claim they did extensive work on the survival horror game, but left the studio before the game was finished.
“I understand if a contractor does a small amount of work for a few months and is left off, but we’re talking full-time employees with over a year invested in the title, and had a hand in significant parts of the product,” one developer told Gamesindustry.Biz. “That’s where the surprise has come from for a lot of us.”
“It definitely stings,” another added. “It sucks. I made a good amount of contribution and worked on it for [a length of time]. To just not be there at all is shitty.”
According to the International Game Developers Association crediting standards, any team member who worked for the company for a minimum of 30 days, including contractors, must be credited accordingly while studios must also retain the names of staffers who leave before launch.
“There was definitely some amount of playing favourites with the people who got credited,” one source said. “My impression is that they pretty much picked people they liked or had some sort of relationship with, and those would get credit and the others wouldn’t.”
“Somebody wanted to send a message, and the message was, ‘Next time have a bit more loyalty to us’,” another said.
Last year Glen Schofield, the founder of Striking Distance Studios, apologised after his tweet which seemingly glorified crunch culture went viral.
“12 to 15 hours days. This is gaming. Hard work. Lunch, dinner, working. You do it ‘cos you love it,” said the now-deleted post. “We value passion and creativity, not long hours. I’m sorry to the team for coming across like this,” read his original statement.
Speaking to Gamesindustry.biz, one former member of staff said: “It’s a pretty intense culture of delivering and putting in those crunch hours, which is fine. Game dev can be intense, especially delivering a product of this magnitude, you don’t always strike the best work-life balance. My issue is those of us who took part in that culture, who put in that time, and worked intensely to help craft this product, were punished with a credit omission for not going the extra mile… to stay until it shipped.”
Ahead of its release, Striking Distance expressed interest in making a Callisto Protocol franchise with the studio’s chief creative officer saying they’d “love” to see the series expand. However, the eventual release of The Callisto Protocol was met with “mostly negative” reviews due to performance issues.
A recent update lets players skip gruesome, and often long, death animations.
In other news, it turns out Microsoft doesn’t actually own the ending of Minecraft.
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