Group of Callisto Protocol Devs Omitted in Credits
Credit roll of The Callisto Protocol missed any mention of the sizable group of developers who worked on the title.
The managers of The Callisto Protocol devs at Striking Distance dropped the ball. It turns out that the game's credits did not mention many developers who took part in the work on this project.
- About 20 developers were said to have been left out of the credits. Among them are people who played key roles in production, including senior designers.
- These employees are the people who left the studio before the work was completed.
- This is unfortunately a fairly common practice, but Striking Distance did not inform employees that this was company policy. To make matters worse, it is difficult to find any clear rules about who was on the payroll and who was left out. Indeed, some employees who left before the game's release appeared in various sections of the credits.
- The game's payroll is displayed for about 20 minutes, so it's hard to conclude that some people were left out just to shorten the time of this segment.
- The International Game Developers Association recommends that the credits include anyone who worked on the game for a minimum of 30 days.
One of the omitted developers commented:
"This sucks. I contributed a lot to the game and worked on it for a long time. Omitting me from the credits is a nasty thing to do."
Not the first controversy in Striking Distance
It is worth recalling that last year there were some high-profile controversies related to working conditions at Striking Distance. The game's director Glen Schofield bragged about the crunch in the team, for which he later had to apologize. According to sources reached by Gamesindustry.biz the studio officially presented a policy of taking care of employee health, but in reality required long overtime. What's more, the bosses kept quiet about staff departures, causing some developers to find out weeks or even months later. In most studios, it is standard to inform about such things, but in the case of Striking Distance it was different.
Some of Gamesindustry.biz's interviewees claim that the studio's management was slightly obsessed with loyalty and the omission of some developers from the payroll gives the impression of an attempt to get back at those people who left before the end of work.
The other side of the coin
At the same time, most former developers nevertheless have good memories of working at the studio. The atmosphere in the team was said to be good, the bosses were nice, and the work was satisfying. According to them, the controversy with the payroll is one of the few problems at Striking Distance, besides the crunch.
"I actually had a great time working there and felt I had a great relationship with everyone on the team. I have nothing bad to say about the management.... The only time there was any friction was when leaving the team."
Recall that The Callisto Protocol was released last December on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5. On the day of release, the game left a lot to be desired technically, but by now the developers had managed to fixed the biggest of the problems.
