In mid-2016, a few months before the release of their first game, Mafia 3, the developers at Hangar 13 in Novato, California gathered for an all-hands meeting. There, according to two people in attendance, Christoph Hartmann, president of the game's publisher, 2K, told employees that their bonuses would be tied to the game's aggregate review score on Metacritic.

Mafia III developer Hangar 13 laid off a significant number of staff today, in yet another example of the video game industry's brutal churn.