Greedfall 2 Developers Are Going on Strike, Allege Studio Management Treats Workers Like ‘Galley Slaves’

Claim they’re overworked, underpaid, and not being listened to.

Updated:

Aug 28, 2024 10:50 am

Posted:

Aug 28, 2024 10:49 am

The developers of upcoming fantasy role-playing game Greedfall 2 have announced plans to strike in protest of management just a few weeks before the game comes out.

Paris-based studio Spiders, which also developed Steelrising and The Technomancer, published an open letter signed by 44 of the 95 staff to studio management including CEO Anne Devouassoux. Spiders is wholly owned by publisher Nacon, which IGN has asked for comment.

The open letter details “several years of known problems, which have been greatly amplified over the past year with the arrival of the current head of the company: instability, opposition to anticipating problems and securing working conditions, global mismanagement, turnover and recruitment problems, unacceptable delays in achieving gender equality and parity, important lack of transparency, denial of problems, refusal to acknowledge worker representation and blocked negotiations.”

Greedfall 2: The Dying World SlideshowSpecifically on Greedfall 2, workers allege it has suffered a “difficult” production and there is “widespread anxiety and a loss of interest among employees.” The staff also said they have suffered significant crunch working on the game.

“For many, it translates into a fear of releasing a disappointing game at the end and/or a feeling of shame over their own work,” the workers said. “For some, it’s the last straw that pushes them to look for work elsewhere.”

Elsewhere in the document, the workers claimed that Greedfall 2’s budget “was reworked multiple times and its early access release postponed several times.”

Management gives the impression of treating us like galley slaves in the hold of a ship.

“Management gives the impression of treating us like galley slaves in the hold of a ship, rowing on and on without ever knowing either the route or the destination of their journey,” the workers said. “Spiders feels like a ship sailing with no one at the helm.”

Greedfall 2 currently has an early access release date of September 24, 2024, with a plan to release the game in full less than a year later. According to staff, that seems unlikely.

“The early access release is painful, as attested by the several delays it suffered, and the complete release of the game less than a year later seems difficult to achieve, as there is so much left to do,” they said.

The staff published a list of demands and outlined a plan to strike the week of September 2. Pickets will be held in front of the company’s offices and online on a Minecraft server created for the occasion, the staff said.

The Spiders strike comes amid a growing labor movement within the video game industry as workers seek to protect themselves from mass layoffs and the threats posed by AI. In July, Starfield developer Bethesda Game Studios became the first Microsoft studio to fully unionize under the Communication Workers of America, forming a “wall-to-wall” union of developers including artists, engineers, programmers, and designers. Sega of America’s union ratified a contract earlier this year, with Activision’s QA workers announcing a union of their own.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].