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Report: Factor 5 Axes 50% of Staff, Might Sue Ex-employee for Blogging About Problems
by Chris Faylor, Dec 16, 2008 9:24am PSTCorroborating word of troubled times at Lair and Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series developer Factor 5, a new source has come forward, claiming that the studio has not paid its employees in nearly two months, and has laid off nearly half of its workforce.
"The last time staff got paid was October 15th," the anonymous source told Edge. According to the source, 37 employees were laid off on Friday, December 12, with roughly 38 people remaining at the besieged developer.
While the closure of publishing partner Brash Entertainment definitely hurt Factor 5, the extent of its problems wasn't known until then-animator Sam Baker blogged about the issues, detailing a cancelled project, no pay, and no employee health care.
Baker has since resigned from the studio, said the source, adding that "Factor 5 is thinking of suing [Baker] for good measure."
"He's young, and was totally devastated by his new found fame," the source said of Baker. According to Baker's now-removed blog, he recently celebrated his first year in the industry. "He didn't think anything of it, innocently posting his heartfelt concerns."
However, problems at Factor 5 started long before Brash closed up shop, claimed the source. He explained: "The thing that bothers me the most about it all is they could have avoided all of this ages ago. It wasn't really the Brash deal going south that was the big problem, but it didn't help much either."
Factor 5 is known to have multiple projects in development, one of which is rumored to be a new Superman game. The Superman game was reportedly being made in conjunction with Brash, but was not the project postponed earlier this month.
Comments
But that's just my take, as someone who's been through something similar.
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Corporations/Companies take advantage of people. It only makes "business sense" to do so. It's great that you can afford to work 60-70 hours. The problem enters when companies look for more people and expect others to do the same as well. We're a bit off the original point here, but fine.
If you want to work extra time to make more, that's awesome. In a more perfect world there would be more opportunities for people to do that. Now if you took a 40 hour/week job and are working regularly 60-80 hours for little or no compensation beyond your 40/week salary.
So do I think people should be telling you HOW to work? No. Do I think that if an employee is being expected to work those type of hours they should have the tools available to them to have some say in it that they get adequate or to see to it that they don't have to work those kind of hours if they have a life outside of work? Abso-fucking-lutely.
Am I saying that contracts shouldn't be allowed to be enforceable? No. Am I saying that contracts shouldn't be used to bully people? Damned straight.
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