An anonymous person, who allegedly is an employee at Red 5, the developer studio of the online shooter Firefall, claims that the employees were not paid in December and that the company’s downfall might be imminent.
Such rumors should always be taken with caution, but there seems to be some truth to this one, as other sources have also confirmed that the employees at Red 5 did not receive their December salary. The developer studio itself did not want to comment on the allegations, but allegedly today, December 30, is finally payday.
Mismanagement at Red 5 Studios?
The employee further explains that the morale within the company is at an all-time low. After Red 5 was acquired by the Chinese company The9 Limited, it initially seemed like they were on a good path to making the online game Firefall a very good game. They should focus more on content rather than adding more features that they had neither the time nor the manpower for. But then everything changed. The then-CEO Chris Whiteside was fired, and The9 Limited began to demand more and more features for the game. These were considered so “important” that they even had to remove the PvP system from the game. In addition, there was a series of layoffs.
The employees are demotivated
According to the anonymous source, mismanagement is to blame for the state that the game and the studio find themselves in. The employees are demotivated enough; a missing paycheck would just be another drop in the bucket. The situation could soon reach a boiling point, and everything looks far from rosy for the future of the online shooter Firefall. The employee explains that everything could still be saved if they could achieve a successful relaunch of the game in the USA and Europe. But he no longer believes that will happen.
