Oh boy, here we go. You may have seen over the weekend that a report from GamesBeat described Ori developer Moon Studios as fostering an "oppressive" workplace, and that report has been getting a lot of attention ever since.
It's a very lengthy article, but to sum it up, interviews with current and former employees reportedly revealed that many of them had issues with founders Thomas Mahler and Gennadiy Korol, including "casual racism, sexism, and bullying". Here's a bit of what the summary of the report had to say:
"Moon developers told GamesBeat that they found the studio’s culture oppressive. They alleged that the leaders used calls for an open and honest workplace as a pretense for abuse. The founders criticized the work of employees in public chats and were stingy with praise. So far no one is suing or claiming unlawful behavior, but many workers are fed up with what they see as inappropriate behavior by the founders."
There's a lot more detail to the report than this, so we recommend giving it a good read for yourself, but in regards to Microsoft specifically, it's stated that the company "had a difficult relationship with Moon Studios over the years", often due to "funding amounts and delays, as the project scopes kept changing and Moon missed deadlines."
Furthermore, GamesBeat's Jeff Grubb stated the the following in a video over on YouTube:
"Microsoft is well aware of what this company is like. And when they got done with Ori 2, there is a reason that Private Division is publishing [Moon Studios'] next game and not Microsoft. I was told this exclusively this morning, that Microsoft was aware, and everyone understood that's what this company was like..."
In response to the report, Thomas Mahler and Gennadiy Korol issued a lengthy statement, explaining as part of it that they "don’t believe the experiences suggested by [GamesBeat's] questions are representative of the more than 80 Moon Studios team members who are thriving and doing great work every day — nor do we believe they are representative of the experiences of former members of our team."
In terms of what's next for Moon Studios, the developer is working on "an RPG that dares to innovate and go far beyond what the genre has offered players thus far", and as previously mentioned, it's being published by Private Division rather than Xbox. Mahler himself suggested recently that the reason for this is because the studio wants "everyone to be able to play together, across all systems, where Moon owns the platform and the IP and we can steer it into the best direction", but very few details have been revealed about the project so far.
As this is a sensitive topic, please remain respectful when discussing it in the comments below.
[source venturebeat.com, via youtube.com]
Comments 10
Shame this is happening to such a talented studio. Wouldn’t it of been more beneficial if Microsoft bought Moon Studios and just got rid of the founders? Either way sounds like Microsoft did right by distancing themselves from them.
Apparently making video games isn't fun. It's a job.
This seems like a non story. The smoking gun they found from reviewing slack and emails is something they say is very clearly a joke when read in context and their interviews with former employees amount to "it was a bunch of small things." It sucks but it just sounds like normal work *****. I have a great union job with ample worker protections but my boss still sucks to deal with.
It seems a lot of these so called ‘reports’ are suddenly appearing in certain games media now and they are against Microsoft studios. To me it seems an attempt by these media outlets to discredit Microsoft’s game studios. And it wouldn’t surprise me with the way fans behave these days.
So I’ll take it with a pinch of salt.
Are there any studios left that aren't known for toxic and oppressive cultures? I thought that was widely known about the industry back in the 90's though. Gaming is basically hollywood culture mixed with tech industry culture. That was never going to yield pleasant environments.
@S1ayeR74 This article isn't really against MS, and isn't pointing fingers at them. It's just saying they're aware of it and that's why they basically parted ways with them, because they (allegedly) didn't want to be mixed up with such a place. So even the article distances them from this problem.
I really need someone to give me a definition for the barrier of entry to qualify as a "oppressive atmosphere". By half of these articles' definitions, literally every single employer I've ever worked for has been oppressive.
I'll wait on my judgment until actual information comes out. At this point it is a bunch of "bro trust me"s.
Getting to the point where any little criticism about your employees work is going to get you cancelled. Toxicity is the new card to add to the pack.
I see that when it comes to toxic workplaces MS's red line is when that affects their milestones and release dates. Otherwise they'd have probably bought them out like Activision.
i feel like its a lot of younge people in theirr 20s bitching about *****....ive seen it at my workplace you hire someone in their 20s and 9 outta 10 times they complain when you tell them they dont do their job well... and think your insulting them as their whole life they been told they do great at eveything... but this is me frrom a middle management position seeing 20 year olds not hand around when you tell them they arent working hard enough
"The founders criticized the work of employees in public chats and were stingy with praise."
Holy **** call the cops.
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