TGO Daily | February 24, 2021 | Techland is a Toxic Workplace
February 25, 2021
In The News
Techland Expose
In a lengthy report by TheGamer.com, it was revealed that Techland (developers of Dying Light) is not a great place to work. Namely because of its CEO, Pawel Marchewka.
Reportedly, working at Techland is chaos. Marchewka and other top-level management create a toxic work culture where employees will have unnecessary amounts of pressure, and then be insulted along the way. If they don’t personally like something, then it won’t be in the game. And if an employee creates something, they need to present it with a direct reference to another game that has done something similar, otherwise it won’t be approved. If it is approved, there’s no guarantee it will stick around longer than a month if management changes their mind on a whim. It can happen for simple things, like the shape of spikes on an enemy — Marchewka might say “That just looks bad” or “This character looks gay,” and decline the work without further feedback.
All of that is just the tip of the iceberg. Dying Light 2’s story has been re-written at least 6 times by multiple different people. Staff turnover is incredibly high at the company, because of the barriers that employees face along the way. Marchewka’s wife is the head of HR. The company hires “experts” with no experience to run the various departments. Marchewka is reportedly uncomfortably obsessive about CD Projekt, and constantly compares Techland to them.
So, regarding their upcoming game, you should be cautious. According to sources, they have “a production pipeline that changes so quickly and rapidly that it might as well not exist.” Another person said “they have no idea what the final game will be, or what the story is. It’s changed so much. People kept quitting, getting fired.”
I encourage you to read the full report from TheGamer, which has way more details than I can fit in this newsletter.
Sony News!
A variety of news items came from Sony today from different places.
1) Jim Ryan has confirmed that more PlayStation exclusives are going to be heading to PC. The first will be Days Gone, arriving this spring. Speaking to the change of pace, Ryan said that it’s much easier for them to port to PC now, and they saw a lot of success with Horizon both financially and in the PlayStation community.
2) Sony has also announced that they are working on the next iteration of the PlayStation VR headset. It will feature improved resolution, field of view, and new controllers that use some of the tech from the DualSense. It would connect directly to the PlayStation 5. It won’t release this year.
3) Ratchet & Clank (2016) from Insomniac is going to be free-to-keep through the month of March. Seems like they’re planning some other free releases throughout the year.
4) Gran Turismo 7 has been delayed to 2022, apparently due to coronavirus timelines shifts.
Paradox News!
Paradox Interactive reported on their full year financials for 2020, which was their best year ever. They reported $216 million in revenue (up 39% year-over-year) and $76 million in profit (up 33%). That revenue comes from 5 million monthly active users across all their games.
One particular note was the company’s displeasure with the release of Empire of Sin, which was released by Romero Games in December. They weren’t happy with the reception of the game AND the quality of it. Updates are planned for the future.
On the other side of the coin, they were very happy with the release of Crusader Kings III, which broke a lot of their internal records. They obviously have a plan that works with their strategy games.
The biggest news belongs in its own segment though:
Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2
Not only has Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 been delayed past 2021 (so 2022 or later), but the development team Hardsuit Labs has been completely replaced. Obviously when you change developers, it’s going to have a time cost. They have confirmed that they stopped accepting pre-orders from the game.
In a blog post, they mentioned that they have high expectations for the game, and want to be able to meet those expectations at release.
Of course, this game hasn’t had the best history. Some key people (Brian Mitsoda, Ka’ai Cluney) were inexplicably released from the company last year, which is never a good sign.
Say Hello!
That’s all for today :) If you want to get in touch, you can always reply to this email. You can also DM me on Twitter, or come join the community on Discord (it’s awesome)!
This newsletter is a companion/alternative to a mini-podcast I produce. The show is archived on YouTube, with most people listening on Amazon Alexa devices — but it’s also available on all podcast hosts. It’s also on Google Home, but I don’t have a link for that one!
And hey, if you like what I do, maybe consider sharing this newsletter with a friend?