According to former developers from Striking Distance Studios, a number of people who worked on The Callisto Protocol have not been included in the game’s end credits.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, five former Striking Distance Studios developers (who have remained anonymous) claim that their names were omitted from the almost 20-minute-long credits roll.
They also have said a total of roughly 20 people across a variety of departments were not included, as well as other former employees being listed as “additional” help in their departments or just in “Miscellaneous”.
The omissions include senior developers, leads, and directors who made “significant contributions”, as well as people who had been at the studio for over a year or had a past history working at Sledgehammer Games, Glen Schofield’s previous studio.
GameIndustry.biz’s sources also claim that these omissions particularly hurt considering just how many hours developers at Striking Distance Studios were putting into the game before launch:
“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.”
The report goes on to reiterate that their sources believe developers who left the studio prior to The Callisto Protocol launching were essentially being “punished with credit omissions”.
While some credit omissions can be ruled as an issue with miscommunication, the situation here if these testimonies are anything to go by seems to be an issue with a rocky workplace culture.
The history of workers in the video games industry not being properly credited for their work has long been a problem, and one would expect a credits roll that goes for 20 minutes to include everybody that worked on the game regardless of whether they decided to stay until the end.
I mean, if you can include the babies of workers, surely you can include people that worked on the game, right? I’m as clucky as the next person, but come on.
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