Aeon Must Die Publisher Responds To Accusation | Screen Rant
Following a series of accusations concerning the mistreatment of employees, Aeon Must Die publisher Focus Home Interactive has put out its response to the claims of crunch and withholding pay. These accusations first came up directly following yesterday's State of Play event which was hosted by PlayStation.
Shortly after the release of the trailer for Aeon Must Die, all of the developers for the game quit the studio, with the trailer accused of being stolen from its original creators. The description of the trailer contained a Dropbox link featuring various testimonials of the hardships the creators went through. These accusations ranged from crunch hours to underpaying staff, which has been a common issue that has cropped up among the workplaces of developers. The workplaces of other companies like Blizzard Entertainment have also been going through similar struggles of fighting for higher compensation.
Focus Home Interactive has put out a response to these accusations on Twitter. In it, Focus claims that these accusations are directed at Limestone, the developers for Aeon Must Die, and that Focus is looking into these allegations. Focus also states that "we pride ourselves on treating our own employees and third party developers fairly and respectfully and this will not change." Focus then declined to make further comments till the situation is more clear.
The replies to this response have been less than amicable, with some pulling up letters as counterpoints to this response. One of these is an old post from Frogwares Studios, the team behind the Sherlock Holmes games, in which Frogwares was under threat of taking down games from storefronts as a result of Focus Home Interactive not transferring the title IDs to Frogwares, according to this accusation. The other is from the aforementioned Dropbox link, in which a letter was sent to Focus in an attempt to get a supportive response for Aeon Must Die, with nothing coming out of this plea. As a result, many see this response as tone deaf and not strong enough to answer the developers cries for help.
This lack of action from Focus Home Interactive beyond assurance of an investigation is what further contributes to a culture where workers still aren't getting the proper treatment that they deserve. The allegations with Frogwares also contradict the words of support that Focus has offered to their workers. This shows that the video game industry still has a long way to go in order to progress towards equality for workers, and that more unionizing is necessary in order to fix this culture. Should these allegations of abuse of the developers of Aeon Must Die prove true, it would show that we put in a lot more effort than what's being done now to ensure workers have basic human rights in the workplace.
Source: Focus Home Interactive