There was an interesting expose by iXBT games, they have interviews with actual developers, not management, about the whole situation at Fntastic (not an ad, you can search it on YouTube, it’s in russian language, but they have english subtitles).
What was basically happening, Gotovtsev brothers (the heads of the studio) were hiring junior devs from small towns, making the devs work for 12-18 hours a day with 1 free day sometimes, no vacations, paying minimum wage, no severance pay if you’re burned out or getting fired, changing plans with every new game they saw (at first it was a singleplayer game, then they decided to switch to MMO; they’ve played GTA V and decided to add cars; remember how original reveal was much darker? Well, they’ve played Spiderman 2 and thought brighter = better, so devs had to change a lot of assets to fit their new “vision” and so on). Only 5 QA engineers, no public testing, upgrade to UE5 2 weeks before the release and the list goes on. Oh, and remember the release and how terrible it was? Devs were trying to fix it, but Gotovtsev brothers decided it was not worth it, firing everyone and closing the studio without any prior notice.
That video left a really awful taste in my mouth.
