![]() “I’ve never yet in my career experienced anyone who can top Jeff’s ‘rally the troops’ speeches,” said one former developer. Last October, Strain launched his newest startup. A few years later he formed Undead Labs and hired Fitzgerald and Williams to make that game, a prototype for which eventually became the first State of Decay, an open world zombie RPG. In 2007 two of his coworkers, Brant Fitzgerald and Doug Williams (neither responded to a request for comment), pitched him on a zombie MMO. In 2000 he left to co-found ArenaNet and make the fantasy action MMO Guild Wars. In the late ‘90s he worked on StarCraft, Diablo, and World of Warcraft at Blizzard. But the studio hired a lot of diverse talent that it did not adequately support. “It’s improved in the last six months or so. “The culture the studio had up until recently was not the most hospitable for anyone that was not a white cishet man,” said one current developer. But current and former developers say those numbers don’t tell the full story of the painful last couple of years, or of how committed the studio or Microsoft will be to supporting its latest wave of hires when the going gets tough. Over the last few years, Undead Labs has seen a number of positive changes and we are confident in the direction the team is taking State of Decay 3, one of our most ambitious open-world games in development.Īccording to a Microsoft spokesperson, those positive changes have included “an entirely new leadership team,” diverse hires in 2021 that were 42% female or non-binary, and 29% from a racial or ethnic minority group, and a March 2022 health survey with 84% of respondents willing to recommend working at Undead Labs. Additionally, all Microsoft employees, including our studio teams, are required to regularly complete our Standards of Business Conduct training which cover topics like harassment, supplier code of conduct, and more. What that support looks like will vary by studio, but each has a direct connection with Microsoft HR resources outside of what they have on their team, and the ability to work with other studios and partner teams to leverage their expertise. In response to a long and detailed list of questions, Microsoft provided only a series of statistics, brief background comments, and the following statement on behalf of the head of Xbox Game Studios, Matt Booty:Įvery studio at Xbox is given the resources and guidance they need to grow in both capability and culture. Despite repeated follow-up attempts by Kotaku, however, those interviews never materialized. Microsoft PR initially reached out during the reporting process for this story to offer potential interviews on some of the topics it covers. As one former developer put it, “We were afraid they would come in and change our culture but our collapse came from within, and we could have used help.” Now they worry the $2 trillion company’s incredibly “hands-off” approach allowed dysfunction to fester, leaving some of the studio’s more vulnerable employees to fend for themselves. Most considered the last few years since the acquisition a period of crisis, and are worried management hasn’t learned the right lessons.Īt first, some employees were worried the Microsoft acquisition would change the indie studio for the worse. ![]() A few said it still has room to improve but has overall been a very good place to work. Many felt very positive about certain aspects of the studio. Kotaku interviewed 12 current and former employees for this article, all of whom requested anonymity because they feared sharing their concerns publicly would doom their careers in the video game industry. And recently it’s faced allegations of mismanagement, burnout, and misogyny as it’s struggled to live up to its promise of being the welcoming, diverse, and inclusive Xbox first-party studio it touts itself as. It’s working on the ambitious sequel State of Decay 3, but after several years is still trapped in pre-production. Undead Labs doubled in size, but lost its charismatic founder. Housed in an old brick building in downtown Seattle 20 minutes from Microsoft’s sprawling 500-acre headquarters, “ the Lab” has undergone a massive transformation from lean indie to first-party studio with triple-A ambitions in the years since it was sold. Spencer helped Microsoft acquire the studio almost four years ago. ![]() ![]() One of them is Undead Labs, the maker of the survival base-building series State of Decay. Spencer’s comments could apply to a lot of game studios. ![]() We fall short every single time someone feels unwelcome in our industry and our communities.” “We fall short when we fail to provide a safe and inclusive environment for every person who works in our industry,” he said. ![]()
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