New allegations have come to light that Atomic Heart isn’t ready for prime time quite just yet.
Originally reported on Russian website DTF.Ru, but corroborated by our source, whistleblowers within Mundfish claim that initial reports that the game has been going through mismanagement has not changed. There are allegedly over 10 people in the studio who are speaking out on these issues. They cited issues with crunch, unmet promises for bonuses, reboots, feature creep, and others.
Gameplay trailers for Atomic Heart were being utilized as vertical slices. While that in itself isn’t necessarily out of the ordinary, the claim was these were deliberately used to mislead investors on the game’s progress. Subsequently, development builds that were shown to the investors led to a cycle of new changes being demanded. Atomic Heart was itself not originally planned to be an open world game, but that was one of the added features.
Interestingly, the whistleblowers also singled out Mundfish CEO Robert Bagratuni. Bagratuni was the person who promised bonuses, if staff gave up weekend and vacations to crunch on the game. Investors other than Bagratuni also demanded crunch over new year’s break, and were given too much sway when it came to who could be fired and hired into the studio.
In regards to milestones, the management planned it all poorly. The studio didn’t meet any of these milestones, especially for the console versions. There was also insufficient time set aside for testing, with only two to three months set aside for console testing.
Focus Entertainment recently unveiled the release trailer for Atomic Heart. It is currently scheduled for release on February 21, 2023 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC exclusively on Steam. With preorders and the marketing push already in effect, it’s quite shocking to have claims that the game isn’t really ready to release at all.
When Focus took up publishing rights, they definitely knew that the game had a poor history, because it was public knowledge. Focus may have pumped money into the project so that they could finish development, but if these whistleblowers are any indication, they may not have been paying attention to Mundfish’s promises and actual progress like they should.
If the allegations are true, of course, it is also possible Focus themselves are being misled about the project, after agreeing to publish it in good faith. If there is something to these rumors, Focus will likely be making a public statement about it soon.
Source: Twisted Voxel
