According to GamesIndustry.biz (opens in new tab), an estimated 20 developers were omitted from the credits of the recently released horror "The Callisto Protocol." This number includes staff who held senior and lead positions at a company called Striking Distance Studios, according to the report.

Sadly, this is not an uncommon phenomenon in the modern video game industry. Developers who leave before a game is released, especially if they are freelancers or contract employees, may not be credited on the final project, even if they have worked on that project for years. Unlike the film industry, there are no mandatory standards surrounding credits, so studios are free to remove anyone they like, but the IGDA (open in new tab) recommends that anyone who has worked on a game for at least 30 days be credited.

Viewed in the broader context, former employees describe Striking Distance's behavior here as "terrible," and the choices of who to let in and who not to let in are arbitrary and inconsistent, and there appears to be no clear policy communicated to staff. According to one source, whether or not such selections are made stems from personal friendships and grievances with upper management.

This was in response to the controversy surrounding the studio's crunch culture, which not only required staff to work punishingly long hours even during the pandemic, but director Glenn Schofield, as of last September, had taken to social media (open in new tab) to was actively bragging about it. According to him, in addition to their normal workloads, some designers were spending up to 10 hours a day in meetings to coordinate their burgeoning teams, not knowing that a 15-hour day, seven days a week work week was unappealing enough, but that the marathon didn't even get the spotlight of the credit to.

It was the final nail in the coffin of a story built up in the years leading up to the game's release: a cohesive team of "Dead Space" veterans, scrappy underdogs against their former corporate masters, fighting to create a great new spiritual successor to the "Dead Space" series. It is the final nail in the coffin. The ruthless reality is a game that was released with controversy, a studio culture of red flags flying, and a sizable group of ex-staff members disappointed and angry at being left unrecognized.