Besides not having been the true revival of the space horror genre, The Callisto Protocol begins to drag a few pans behind the scenes of its development. Prior to its release, it was Glen Schofield himself who had created the controversy with awkward tweets concerning the crunch within the studios, and now here is that Striking Distance is pinned down following complaints from several artists who had the unpleasant surprise of not seeing their name noted in the game credits.
Names discarded for unclear reasons
It’s not the first time something like this has happened, especially lately. as we have seen with God of War Ragnarok. In the case of The Callisto Protocolthis is even more visible since Gamesindustry.biz reports thatabout 20 artists have not been credited for their work. And we’re not even talking about interns here (and even if they were, it wouldn’t change anything), but about lead developers and other major positions for development. There would be artists here who had worked for a long time in the studio, with even some people who were present at Sledgehammer Games, the former studio of Glen Schofield.
The reason for this is just that these people left development before the game was releasedbut this practice would not however be generalized within the studio, since other people in the same case saw their name appear in the credits. One of the site’s sources therefore suggests that there is a question of a certain favoritismdiscarding the people studio executives liked least:
” I think the Sledgehammer guys like loyalty. And they can be punitive if they detect that there are none… The omission of names from the credits felt like an obvious insult to those who were gone. Someone wanted to send a message, and the message was, ‘Next time, be a little more loyal to us.’ »
Ex-developers take the opportunity to point the finger at the corporate culture that reigns within the studio, with departures that were not communicated to the rest of the teams and abusive overtime that was encouraged, even essential, despite the speech of facade. All the speeches of the respondents are not alike, however, and others mention having enjoyed working within Striking Distance, so we will have to wait for more testimonies to see if these practices were anchored within the studio or not. But the fact remains that this story of credits is very damaging.