The Microsoft-owned studio Undead Labs, known as the creator of State of Decay, is the latest game company to embrace a culture of sexism and bullying, this time in a Kotaku report released Thursday.
Undead Labs started out as a small indie company focused on creating an open-world zombie RPG with founder Jeff Strain at the center of the studio. Employees who worked with him described his early leadership as invaluable. This game was made into State of Decay, released by Microsoft in 2013, and was an astonishing critical and financial success.
Current and former State of Decay 3 developers Studio Undead say the transition to Xbox’s first batch has been dirty and painful over the past few years due to its sexism and lack of direction.
Some say it’s finally overthrown, but for others it’s too late. https://t.co/eS0KsP4ys5
— AmericanTruckSongs8 (@ethangach) March 31, 2022
Undead Labs began work on an expansion that doubled in size when State of Decay 2 was released in 2018. A month after its release, a move that surprised many of its employees, Microsoft bought the studio and formed State of Decay. For the brand new Xbox Game Pass as a new draw of users. Despite the launch delay, State of Decay 2 continued to attract players by releasing more content.
The studio then had to decide between working on the third State of Decay or going back to the original zombie RPG vision. The pre-production of the next game was uncharacteristically dirty, regardless of its outcome.
“Milestones consisted of a number of different features that were less about making a fun video game and more about checking out the roster,” a former Kotaku developer told Kotaku.
This heterogeneous development process is exacerbated by the pattern of discrimination against working women, non-binary and otherwise marginalized.
Studio workers say women are often brought up, overlooked and fired in meetings.
“We had to follow meeting etiquette because the men would talk so badly about the women at every meeting and put them down,” said another former developer. “But the instructions didn’t help.”
Kotaku publishes an article on Undead Labs today. Here are my thoughts. https://t.co/p8oA4tu9b4
—Jeff Strain (@jeffstrain) March 30, 2022
When Strain began stepping down from studio management in early 2019, ArenaNet head of development Philip Holt was the first to back management as chief of staff. He replaced Stein as studio manager the following year.
The studio’s developers have accused Holt of rushing to recruit former colleagues to Undead Labs’ new satellite offices in Florida and Illinois. He did this to make Undead Labs a more important part of the Xbox Studio Network, and thus Holt more important to big business. Microsoft has denied the allegations.
Current and former employees also accused Holt of firing two female executives both for not supporting them enough and for hiring men to fill their roles.
“I know some of our current and former employees share that their experience at the lab has not always been positive,” Holt said in a statement. Noted.
“We have seen many changes over the past few years: in 2021 we have a completely new management team, including a new director and a new human resources department; Since the start of the pandemic, we have hired approximately 75 employees and changed the demographics. From our team. “We’ve already seen that our ongoing cultural transformation creates a better place to work for the team and leads to better games for our community.”
Indeed, Holt helped Strain recruit Ann Schlosser, the studio’s first person and cultural leader, to help manage the teams and transition from Little India to Xbox. Current and former employees say it does little to mediate employee disputes or eliminate discrimination in the studio.
“There was a sexually abusive man on the SOD3 team and Anne didn’t do anything about it,” the former developer said. “There was a Tech Art team manager who was afraid Anna would back down, and voila, almost the entire Tech Art team left.”
“Someone once looked for Philip in public. [Holt] “Once ignored,” said another ex-developer. [diversity and inclusion] In a meeting where people were crying, Philip said he was treated unfairly because the issue was public. He said he and Ann would invest in supporting D&I. But that never happened and ignored the problem. ”
Microsoft says it is actually investing in the diversity and inclusion of Undead Labs. The studio is now said to be 32% female or non-white and 20% non-white, down from 15% female and 12% non-white when the studio was purchased. Schlosser also denied having “tolerated or justified source-approved behavior.”
Production challenges continued as unrealistic delivery deadlines and senior executives piled into State of Decay 3.
“Within a week, five people announced that they were gone,” said the current developer. “There was someone in 10 starts who needed it, and the rest were heartbroken.”
While some developers at the studio are optimistic that Undead Labs has learned from the mistakes of the past few years, others are more skeptical. State of Decay 3 is in pre-production.
Source : dbl tap
