While back-and-forths between developers and management aren’t exactly new or interesting, the seven-page document shared with us by an anonymous developer, containing the team’s questions for Juhl – most of which he apparently “refused to answer or ducked” – certainly is. While we can’t share the full document here out of respect for this studio’s developers and artists, the general sentiment is clear: the divide between executives and creators, which is common in many companies, is growing wider by the day at Starbreeze.
If real, the list of questions confirms not only the upcoming closure of the French division but also reveals that the tech team from France was largely responsible for patches and DLCs in Starbreeze games – raising concerns about the future of Payday titles – with one dev summarizing it perfectly in their question: “How can Starbreeze survive when we can barely survive when our French colleagues are on vacation?
Additionally, the list also appears to confirm that the layoffs that have already taken place were not due to financial difficulties or employee performance, and the workers who were let go were not offered severance packages, making one question why the job cuts were even needed in the first place. According to the list, some devs worry that if Project Baxter – a multiplayer adventure game based on the Dungeons & Dragons franchise that Starbreeze is developing in partnership with Wizards of the Coast – fails, the studio may not have enough funds to continue its operations.
The overarching theme of the Q&A centers on developers’ lack of trust in top management, with topics like disrespect, distrust, transparency issues, executives misleading both developers and their partner Krafton, and managers and HR being unfair in how employees are assessed or selected for hiring or firing woven throughout the entire list. One developer half-jokingly remarked, “Can we make a poll to see if we want to keep Mats as CEO or the French Team?” illustrating the level of disdain many Starbrezzers currently have for the company’s upper echelon. As a cherry on top, the list reveals that the employees “are not legally allowed to share the news and progress on the French entity layoffs,” which explains the lack of information on the layoffs within the company and developers’ hesitance to provide additional details.
That said, I’d like to emphasize that at this point, the authenticity of the insider’s report can’t be definitively, 100 percent confirmed, as there’s still a chance – albeit a small one given the amount of information provided – that the two screenshots of Slack chat, the seven-page document, and the Starbreeze’s All-Hands Meeting presentation from January 10 sent to us could have all been fabricated. Tomorrow, on February 18, Starbreeze’s Year-End Report 2024 is set to go live, and hopefully, it will officially address both the layoffs and the future of the company’s French division, dismantling the aura of uncertainty that has been lingering around the studio for the past few months.
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