“He very consciously manipulated and exploited not only myself, but almost everyone on and around the team.” “I was a teenager with no game development experience, and I was taken advantage of by Finn Brice,” Reece said. Like many unpaid workers, their job title was “contributor.” Reece worked on the game’s lore and narrative while also managing forums, often late into the night. Reece worked on Starbound for almost two years, between 20.
In a series of interviews with Polygon, Reece and other former developers on Starbound spoke of their time working with Brice in scathing terms, and included allegations of bullying and harassment. “I also witnessed a lot of inappropriate behavior.” I was really naive and too afraid to ask to be paid, because anyone who did would be screamed at. Former worker Fetalstar, aka Christine, tweeted: “I put in at least a hundred hours of work, and didn’t see any sort of compensation. Other former workers came forward with similar stories of their own.
But the issue was highlighted recently by a widely shared tweet thread from designer Damon Reece, in which they outlined how they, starting at the age of 16, “worked hundreds of hours” on Starbound and “wasn’t paid a single cent.”
Some of these developer say they felt their inexperience was exploited by the company’s founder, Finn Brice.Īllegations of employee exploitation and difficult working conditions on Starbound have popped up in forums before. Former developers who worked on Chucklefish’s 2014 indie hit Starbound say they worked on the game for free - sometimes logging hundreds of hours of labor.
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