The authors of the indie hit Gone Home lost almost all employees due to the toxic behavior of the co-founder

Fullbright is a small indie studio, mainly known for the title Gone Home. Despite initial successes, the team literally collapsed during the development of a new project. Because of the actions of the co-founder, almost all women have left it over the past couple of years. There are less than 10 people left in the studio.Open Roads

On August 4, Polygon published an investigation of the situation in Fullbright.

The material is based on the testimony of 12 former employees.

Key points from the investigationSince the beginning of the development of the studio’s latest game — Open Roads (it started in 2019) — a total of 15 people have left Fullbright.

• There are at least 10 women among them.Now there are about six people left in the studio.
• As a result, the once small and cohesive team literally collapsed in just a couple of years.The root of all the problems turned out to be Fullbright co-founder Steve Gaynor.
• According to former employees, they were strained by constant monitoring and unnecessary micromanagement on his part.Although none of them have experienced sexual harassment, they describe Gaynor’s behavior as toxic.
• He could humiliate employees in front of colleagues, devalued their work and words, and manipulated them in every possible way.One of the employees stated that Gaynor’s actions reminded her of the behavior of the head of another indie team, Scavengers Studio.
• Read more about this story here.The problem was that women simply did not have the tools to influence the boss.
• Fullbright has always been a small studio, and therefore there were no HR specialists in it. Some employees expressed their dissatisfaction with Gaynor personally, but these conversations did not lead to anything.Some women tried to report the problems to the publisher Annapurna Interactive, but this also did not have the desired effect.
• One of the former employees said that at Fullbright she had “the worst professional experience in the gaming industry.”Against the background of constantly quitting women, Gaynor still resigned from the post of creative director of Open Roads in March of this year.
• “My leadership style has hurt Fullbright employees, and for that I sincerely apologize,” he said in a comment to Polygon.At the same time, Gaynor still remains the screenwriter of Open Roads, although he hardly interacts with the team.
• Now Annapurna acts as an intermediary between him and the rest of the developers.As a result, the development of Open Roads has actually stopped.
• Initially, the game was supposed to be released in 2021, but due to mass layoffs and a crisis within the studio, the release will probably have to be postponed.Polygon notes that now most of the remaining employees are depressed.
• However, some of them still believe in Open Roads and Fullbright, despite the behavior of one of the founders.Fullbright was founded in 2012 by three developers (including Gaynor) who had previously worked on the DLC Minerva’s Den for BioShock 2.

Their first game, Gone Home, won several awards, including winning the Best Debut award at the BAFTA Game Awards in 2014.