The Day Before, the most wishlisted game on Steam with over 3 million users interested in the zombie MMO, recently revealed that it is created with the help of unpaid workers.
Despite the game’s success, developer Fntastic recently added a page to its website asking for help from ‘volunteers’ to help complete the project. This caused backlash from many, as the studio revealed tasks including localization, and programming features would be carried out by volunteers.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Fntastic clarified its position. In response to the use of the term ‘volunteer’ for both unpaid and salaried worker the company said, “Essentially, the word ‘volunteer’ comes from the Latin word ‘voluntarius’, meaning ‘willing’ or ‘of one’s own choice’, anyone who is open to life can become a volunteer with Fntastic.”
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However, when the studio went on to describe its employees it became clear that roughly 30% of work completed for the studio is carried out by unpaid workers. There are 100 salaried employees currently at the company working as “engineers, artists, and HR professionals”. However, work which is usually also done by paid workers, whether internally or by contracted teams, is being completed by “40 external US and worldwide volunteers,”.
Defending its decision to use volunteers over hiring employees for highly-skilled positions, Fntastic went on to explain, “We ordered localization for Propnight from a well-known large studio specializing in translation,” it continued “ As practice has shown, the result of their work was not so perfect. Most of it had to be redone with the help of our enthusiastic volunteers.”
While some of the work mentioned such as “organizing our Discord communities” can be done by unpaid volunteers, in popular games, and at large studios it is usually the tasks of hired community managers. The studio also claims that Propnight’s volunteers also “found bugs,”, and “dealt with cheaters”, which is usually the task of paid QA testers and customer support.
Defending the decision to use unpaid staff for roles such as QA, localization, community management, and customer support, Fntastic said that one of its unpaid volunteers is now a salaried employee. However, with 40 volunteers currently working for the team this is an exceedingly low transferral rate.
Written by Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.
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