Employees describe Moon Studios as an 'oppressive place to work'

In an eye-opening report from GamesBeat, current and former employees of Ori and the Will of the Wisps developer Moon Studios describe the company an “oppressive place to work” with founders Thomas Mahler and Gennadiy Korol allegedly making a number of unprofessional and offensive comments.

Additionally, employees describe the atmosphere at Moon Studios as one rife with burnout, sexism, bullying, and racism. In the company’s text chat, Mahler is said to have made the comment, “Tyler is the only person who is aware of my devious plan to kill the Jews by making them work to death through game development.”

That isn’t the only inappropriate “joke” shared in the company chat by its founders, either. GamesBeat noted, “One developer said the chat was ‘rough’ because the founders felt free to make jokes about their penis sizes.”

In another instance, Mahler had reportedly pitched for a character in an upcoming game to be raped. Employees told GamesBeat it took “about a month to convince him this was a bad idea for a plot in a video game” with the objective simply being to provide the character with a motivation for revenge.

GamesBeat reviewed the chat logs they received and found evidence of harsh language along with “conflicting or unclear directions when it came to feedback.”

Another developer commented on the founders’ behavior, stating:

A number of other employees use the term “oppressive” when describing Moon Studios. One developer went as far as to describe the situation as “death by a thousand cuts” with another saying something similar, noting the passion they had for their job was drummed out of them.

“We don’t believe the experiences suggested by your questions are representative of the more than 80 Moon Studios team members who are thriving and doing great work every day — nor do we believe they are representative of the experiences of former members of our team. In fact, we are very proud of our history of making people happy, advancing their careers, and contributing to their financial success.

We built Moon Studios with a simple premise. First, we wanted to create a distributed studio that is not limited by geographic boundaries enabling us to draw the top talent from around the world. Second, we wanted to foster a vibrant culture where our team thrives and delivers the very best work in our industry. And finally, from day one we set out to share the profits and rewards of our efforts with the full team. We believe we have succeeded.

What makes our team so powerful is our global and cultural diversity — we have team members working from more than 40 different countries across four continents — and a flat studio structure that allows everyone to speak honestly and directly and to challenge and push each other to do our very best work. We purposely set out to create a different kind of studio — one that encourages creativity, open communication, collaboration, and performance.

The result has been two award-winning games — with more on the horizon — and a team of professionals who enjoy working together, are excelling and breaking new ground in our industry, while also sharing in the financial success of Moon Studios. If at times we are brutally direct in our critiques and challenges, we are also genuine and vocal in our praise. We are incredibly proud of everything we have built and achieved together.

Finally, we appreciate the irony that we — an Austrian and an Israeli Jew — started this multicultural enterprise. We view each other as brothers. And, like brothers, we sometimes argue and frequently tease each other. We have made jokes at our own expense about the differences in our backgrounds — and there may have been times that our teasing of each other has come off as insensitive and may have made others feel uncomfortable.

Moon Studios has prospered for 12 years. We have grown and learned so much over all of these years. We have been privileged to work with many, many great, and extremely talented people. We are truly grateful and proud of our team — those who are here today as well as those who spent time at Moon and have since moved to other ventures – and we are happy to have made a positive difference in their lives. We are not perfect but we deeply care about our talent and are constantly working hard to improve. If we have ever made anyone feel uncomfortable or let anyone down — we regret that and we will always strive to do better.” — Thomas Mahler and Gennadiy Korol

Following this, GamesBeat reports that the founders had a 30-minute, private internal meeting with the team. During the meeting, Korol and Mahler are said to have brought up some of the aforementioned issues, while offering an “anonymous feedback system for devs.”

We hope through the investigative work of GamesBeat, Moon Studios can begin to implement meaningful change. That said, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of hope from developers in that regard.

Another developer said:

For more on the atmosphere and culture at Moon Studios, be sure to read through the full report from GamesBeat. And be sure to check back, as we’ll be sure to keep you posted on any new developments regarding Moon Studios.