Chucklefish Studio accused of non-payments to Starbound developers
Several developers at once accused the British Chucklefish of non-payments. For example, it is claimed that many Starbound employees were not paid a cent.
The topic was raised by one of them — developer Damon Reece on Twitter. According to him, he worked for Chucklefish at the age of 16 and spent hundreds of hours on Starbound. The studio did not pay for his services, as well as the services of dozens of other employees, Rees said.
His words were soon confirmed by artist Christine Crossley and composer Clark Powell. They are also involved in Starbound. Moreover, the latter has almost finished working on the music for the game. But then the founder of Chucklefish — Finn Brice — tried to leave him without payment, as well as musical artists.
All these people claim that Chucklefish has profited at their expense. Starbound came out of early access two years ago and became a hit. All this time, Rhys and others were afraid to raise the topic of non-payments in Chucklefish. But now they are no longer afraid that the scandal will affect their careers.
Toby Fox, the creator of Undertale and Deltarune, and the founder of Igloosoft Games Rho Wattson also had their say. The former, like Powell, worked on music for Starbound. The second drew sprites. Both sided with Rhys, Crossley and Powell and said their words could be trusted.
Toby Fox’s work with Finn Bryce left “strange impressions”. Ultimately, Fox’s music didn’t make it into the game either.
As for Wattson, she reported the following: “The position of the management (Chucklefish) was this: if you care about them, pay them out of your share. And this is despite the fact that they: a) earned 5 times more than me; b) constantly said that I am nobody in this company and have no right to vote.”
Chucklefish is a British publisher and developer founded in 2011. Action-adventure game Starbound is the most famous development of the company. And another hit was the Stardew Valley published by her.
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