You may have heard about or read the Variety article published last month about NetherRealm studios, and if you haven't, check it out. More brutal than most of the combat in their latest offering, Mortal Kombat 11, there have been a slew of complaints about insane hours, crunch time insanity and more. Through a series of interviews with former and current employees, the Variety article lays it bare, painting a picture of a pretty unforgiving work environment.
About new deadlines, added features at the last minute and failures of management, one employee told Variety:
"Everybody said from the get-go, ‘No, this isn’t going to impact any development time at all; we should be fine. We’ll use the content we have now. Little did our creative director, our publishing team and marketing know that we were already about three months behind on the entire game."
Yikes.
NetherRealm Studios has responded to the article after a bit of time has passed, and it's the usual toe-the-line, cookie cutter dreck you would expect to hear. Then again, what else are they going to do? Tell the unvarnished truth? Here is the response from the company, complete with all the right buzzwords like: "appreciate," "respect," encourage diversity," "actively looking into all allegations," etc. Read the response below.
"At NetherRealm Studios, we greatly appreciate and respect all of our employees and prioritize creating a positive work experience," the company told Variety. "As an equal opportunity employer, we encourage diversity and constantly take steps to reduce crunch time for our employees. We are actively looking into all allegations, as we take these matters very seriously and are always working to improve our company environment. There are confidential ways for employees to raise any concerns or issues."
Mortal Kombat 11 is out now on all platforms, and apparently, they only had to run a couple sweatshops to get it done.
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