Atomic Heart developers talked about crunches and mass layoffs in Mundfish
After the release of the Atomic Heart gameplay video, a shooter from Mundfish, information appeared that in reality the game looks worse than on video, and the gameplay is a montage. To find out if this is true, the author of the Telegram channel “Game Dev that we deserve” talked with 10 former and current employees of Mundfish.
It turned out that the developers have problems not only with Atomic Heart, but also with their own management. Mass layoffs, constant crunches, interference of incompetent people in the development process have become the norm for Mundfish.
Of course, the situation is extremely bad for the quality of the game.
Electronic Arts, when visiting the office by a delegation from the USA, played a game in the summer of 2018. After that, they left the office in bewilderment.
Fake or not fake?
The gameplay in the new video is directed, but it’s not a montage. According to the author of the channel, this is excusable. Directing in gameplay videos is not neglected even by Ubisoft.
The interviewed developers admitted that the animation, graphics and effects in the game are really good. But the emphasis on the visual component has had a bad effect on other aspects. According to sources, the game comes out beautiful, but very linear. There is practically no plot in it. In addition, it is poorly optimized, since the management hires programmers with almost no experience.
Mundfish CEO Robert Bagratuni (Maxim Zatsepin) believes that only the picture sells the game, so the gameplay and plot can be neglected. The bad rumors have been confirmed. Claims against him are based on incompetence in the field of game development.
And what about the management?
Bagratuni is not the only Mundfish top manager who is considered incompetent. There are enough managers in the studio who interfere in the development without understanding anything about it. None of them knows what kind of game they want to see.
Until now, more than a year after the start of development, the management does not have an understanding of what they will get in the end. First they want DOOM, then Dark Souls, then Prey. There is no project management. There is no development plan and backlog for at least the coming weeks. There can be no question of any complete and planned development cycle.
In such conditions, creating a good game exceeds all imaginable possibilities of Mundfish. And the fact that people are constantly being fired from the studio does not help the case. Over the past year, the Mundfish staff has halved (by 12 people). By the way, no one is employed according to the Labor Code, and when dismissed, they do not pay wages for the month worked.
As a result, when there were only three employees left in the Moscow office, they decided to start the development of Atomic Heart from scratch. Currently, the project is only 20% ready.
In the summer of 2018, the game was more complete than it is now. Due to the restart of development, it rolled back in gameplay. The interlocutors point out that the rollback in the gameplay was very strong.
What did the Mundfish management say?
The top management of the studio is sure that the author of the Telegram channel conducted an investigation only for the sake of hype.
All of the above is speculation and juggling rumors against the background of the growing popularity of the Atomic Heart game.
The management also noted that due to the strict internal privacy policy, developers never see the whole picture of what is happening in the studio.
The author’s full material with comments from anonymous Mundfish sources can be read here.
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