According toGameIndustry.biz, who spoke with five formerStriking Distanceworkers, about twenty developers across a variety of departments were omitted from the credits ofThe Callisto Protocol. Some of those developers left off the credits reportedly include senior staffers, leads, and directors.
Having previously been criticized for glorifying crunch culture inside the company, The Callisto Protocol developer Striking Distance Studios now faces accusations by a group of its former workers, who alleged that they were left out of the game’s credits, despite making a significant contribution to its implementation.
The list of workers that was omitted from the credits reportedly includes senior developers, leads, and directors who had a history working with the company. People who had worked at Striking Distance Studios and CEO Glen Schofield’s Sledgehammer Games for over a year also could not make it into the credits of The Callisto Protocol.
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“It definitely hurts,” one developer says. “It sucks. I made a good contribution and worked on the game for a long time. Not being in the credits sucks.” Another developer added:” 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. That’s where the surprise has come from for a lot of us."
Although it is not uncommon for developers who leave a game before its completion to be uncredited, the problem here is that Striking Distance had no such policy that was communicated to its employees. Former developers also pointed out that there is an inconsistency in how the credits roll is distributed among employees, saying that the people added to the credits list were chosen unfairly.
“There was definitely some amount of playing favorites with the people who got credited,” one developer spoke with the outlet. “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.”
There is currently no official word from Striking Distance in response to the allegations. It should be stated that the International Game Developers Association standardizes to include all developers who have worked at least 30 days in the company in the project’s credits roll.
