Star Citizen is a famously ambitious crowdfunded space sim that’s been in development for nearly a decade, and developer Cloud Imperium Games has studios all over the world working on the game, including one in Austin, Texas.
Last month, several massive snowstorms struck North America, affecting huge parts of the United States, and even affecting parts of Mexico and Canada. But no state was hit harder than Texas, which was stuck by massive power outages caused by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas not winterizing the state’s power grid, as well as its grid being independent from the US’s other national power grids. At least 82 people died, and several Texas video game studios were forced to shut down.
Several Star Citizen employees located in Austin have come out under conditions of anonymity to talk about how they were unhappy with how Cloud Imperium treated them during the disaster. While several Call of Duty League matches were postponed due to inclement weather with no questions asked, Cloud Imperium didn’t seem to think its employees deserved the same considerations. Managers required that their employees work as normal and those that couldn’t were required to “enter PTO for whatever time [they] cannot make up.” From the way the employees describe it, there was poor communication and little sympathy to be had for those affected.
According to the anonymous sources, “Head leadership for the company never appeared to acknowledge that we even faced a natural disaster and seemed to completely neglect to communicate our situation to other studios.” This could be seen in the attitude of some of the other offices, who were reportedly unaware of the extent of the situation and thought they just wanted a “snow day.” Despite the fact that, for those in the Austin office, losing power and internet access was far from a snow day-like break. “It brought on stress of how to survive, keep babies and pets alive, and was by no means an enjoyable break for anyone who couldn’t work.”
This looks pretty bad for Cloud Imperium’s management; they come off as very callous in what their employees are saying about them and their handling of the situation during the Texas snowstorms. Most would agree that a company that has gotten over $316 million in crowdfunding money should be able to pay its employees when they’ve been hit by disaster and communicate with all of its studios about the situation.
It might not be considered surprising that Cloud Imperium’s management failed to communicate properly with its workers. Fans have been unhappy with the company’s lack of communication for over eight years now. Employees are even saying that the game is starting to resemble “a gacha for expensive ships and no actual gameplay” and are getting tired of the company’s focus on marketing and what they feel are “useless features being constantly shoved in and removed.”
Star Citizen is currently in development for PC.
Source: Kotaku
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