Twenty developers have claimed they've been deliberately left from the credits for Striking Distance Studios' The Callisto Protocol.
The developers claim they did extensive focus on the survival horror game, but left the studio before the game was finished.
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“I understand if a contractor does a small amount of work with a couple of months and is left off, but we’re talking full-time employees with more than a year invested in the title, coupled with a hand in significant areas of the merchandise,” one developer told Gamesindustry.Biz. “That’s in which the surprise originates from for a lot of us.”
“It will be stings,” another added. “It sucks. I made a great deal of contribution and done it for [a length of time]. To simply not be there at all is shitty.”
According to the International Game Developers Association crediting standards, any team member who helped the organization for a minimum of Thirty days, including contractors, should be credited accordingly while studios should also support the names of staffers who leave before launch.
“There is definitely some amount of playing favourites with the people who got credited,” one source said. “My impression is they pretty much picked people they liked or had some kind 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 little 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 really is gaming. Effort. Lunch, dinner, working. You're doing so 'cos you like it,” said the now-deleted post. “We value passion and creativity, shortly hours. Remorseful to the team for coming across such as this,” read his original statement.
Speaking to Gamesindustry.biz, one former member of staff said: “It’s a pretty intense culture of delivering and investing in those crunch hours, that is fine. Game dev could be intense, especially delivering an item of this magnitude, you don’t always strike the very best work-life balance. My issue is those of us who taken part in that culture, who place in that time, and worked intensely to help craft this product, were punished with a credit omission for not going the additional mile- to remain until it shipped.”
Ahead of its release, Striking Distance expressed interest in creating a Callisto Protocol franchise using the studio's chief creative officer saying they'd “love” to see the series expand. However, the eventual discharge of The Callisto Protocol was met with “mostly negative” reviews because of performance issues.
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