Metroid Dread's MercurySteam discredits employees who didn’t work at least 25% of the game's total dev time

[Dardan Sandiego]

damn.
evil policy is evil.

FWIW, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong about tying credit to some minimum amount of contribution, theoretically. But it's a complex issue because there are no industry wide crediting standards. Even specific roles aren't often well defined. Like how some producers can be quite hands on whereas others are effectively project managers. Who is a tech lead? What is "main programming"? What do you have to get an "additional art" credit? They seem to vary wildly between studios. And obviously credits don't really tell you much about the volume of an individuals contributions.

The bigger issue here is that there's companies like MercurySteam who seemingly exploit the system to put their employees in a disadvantageous position. Because that's what this is all about. It's not like they're gonna run out of space so they can't put someone's name on there. I don't know how they compare to other developers but to me, MercurySteam's conditions sound draconian.

I work in journalism and I know that if I write an article, it's gonna have my byline, both in print and online. If I contribute to a coworker's article, I negotiate with them about including my byline and not my employer or even editor. If I'm out of a job tomorrow, those articles are best account of my abilities and since they are public, I don't need my employer's blessing to use them. Anything else would be exploitative.

 

[10k]

That is scummy.

Not as scummy as a certain purple website that credited 0% of its users work before selling for $4.55m.

But still scummy.

 

[Brock Reiher]

The credits for dread are already super long, there's no excuse not to put a few more names in there

 

[Dark Cloud]

Mercury Steam will have to figure this out for the better. Usually when stuff like this becomes so widely public changes will happen.

 

[Zellia]

I did two weeks work experience in QA as a teenager for a (pretty obscure) game and iirc I was at least given in an in-game credits special thanks shoutout, cause it was too close to release to get me in the manual credits.

That was two weeks, working on a game for eight months and not being credited for it must feel like a massive middle finger.

 

[TheGreatLugia]

This is awful but unfortunately not surprising.

 

[HK-47]

Fuck that shit. Support Labor over Management

 

[MP!]

not saying it's right but this is pretty common

well not REALLY common but it happens

 

[SiG]

Incoming credits patch?

 

[Ryosuke]

That's bullshit, screwing over the workers.

 

[Koni]

Man, I really hope that gets fixed really quickly. The game itself doesn't deserve to be bogged down by this, Metroid really needs all of the positive attention it can get.

Also, I'm pretty sure you can contribute important stuff to the game and still come away with less than 25% of the development time, so what the hell? Crediting absolutely everyone who made a contribution to the game should be a no-brainer. You're playing with people's livelihoods here.

 

[YoboD]

Incoming credits patch?

There absolutely should be, even if they don’t want to Nintendo own the game and should be able to tell them to do it to avoid negative publicity if nothing else.

Employees needing to work on the game for a year to be included in the credits is some bullshit, everyone who worked on the game should be included in the credits.

 

[Sheldon]

Let's add a credit list to the top of the OP, with every name that should have shown up at the end of Metroid Dread but didn't we know about.

And if anyone finds more speaking up on Twitter or elsewhere, shout them out, too.