Developers of the ambitious space-sim game Star Citizen have been forced to speak out against a “hit piece” published about their company by popular gaming website The Escapist, which allegedly features comments from former and current employees who discuss its “toxic work environment” and the arrogance of its management.
Chris Roberts, Chairman of Star Citizen development team Cloud Imperium Games, has issued a lengthy response to a report posted by The Escapist writer Lizzy Finnegan, dismissing the sources she used as a basis for her piece, along with questioning the ethical integrity of the site in general in an email posted to The Escapist’s Senior Editor John Keefer. Since Roberts posted his response, it has emerged that some sources used by Finnegan in the feature were actually lifted from company review site Glassdoor, which allows anonymous users to post unverified reviews of businesses online. What makes this discovery even more suspicious is that these Glassdoor reviews were posted just a few days prior to Finnegan’s article going online. You can see the posts quoted verbatim in the article here.
With Star Citizen having attracted around $90 million through its crowdfunding campaigns, it is inevitably a big target for those who wish to raise concerns about whether Cloud Imperium Games are doing enough to justify the amount of money backers have put into it. Finnegan claims that she spoke to sources who stated that at some point Star Citizen had become “more about the campaign and less about the actual game,” a claim which Roberts rejects, with him replying: “You can’t build a castle in the same time you would a wood shed no matter how much money or how many people you have.”
Chris Roberts, Chairman of Cloud Imperium Games.
However, Finnegan’s report features even more controversial allegations, with one anonymous source branding it “the most toxic environment I have ever worked in,” and another accusing CIG’s Vice President of Marketing Sandi Gardiner of using offensive terms in emails she sent out to employees. “She would write emails with so much profanity,” the source claimed, adding: “She would call people stupid, retard, faggot. Accuse men of not having balls.”
But these sources, which were not featured on Glassdoor, have also been brought into question, with it being claimed that they were actually from the mouth (or rather, keyboard) of Derek Smart, President of independent game developer 3000AD, who appears to have a vendetta against CIG and Roberts. In his blog post, Roberts writes: “[Derek Smart] is the same person who wrote a letter to Origin and me after Wing Commander was out claiming that we were infringing on his game and we had to cease publishing it or he would sue us. We told him we never heard of him and good luck with that. He never sued. His game was, of course, the now infamous Battlecruiser 3000AD that would take many more years to come out (I think I shipped four Wing Commanders before his game came out).”
Roberts claims that the criticisms from sources featured in The Escapist article mirror excerpts from rants Smart has made on his blog about Star Citizen, with him telling Keefer: “I know you say that “none of these come from Derek” but we both know that’s not true. You are quoting the exact same things in your email he has spewed in his blogs and twitter for months. If you want me to give you links to the exact same claims (which are patently UNTRUE) I can but we both know it’s coming from him and the few people he’s rounded up.”
Roberts continues: “We are a company of 261 employees spread across two continents and four development studios. With a company our size there will definitely be a few unhappy ex-employees – the same would be true of any large organization – we have built up quickly and not everyone is a superstar or fits in with the culture. We have parted ways with a few people over the past couple of years, not all of them amicable, and it is alarming to feel like there is a one sided piece that will be filled with complaints of people who aren’t part of the project for a reason. As long as I’ve made games, especially on large projects this has always been the case and it shouldn’t be news.”
The Escapist has since included excerpts from Roberts’ response in the original post, though the report remains online. The site has yet to release an official response regarding the complaints the feature has received.
