In recent years, many giants of the video game industry have been exposed for sexism and creating toxic workplace environments, and it seems the studio behind State of Decay 3 is no exception. Undead Labs was purchased by Microsoft back in 2018, and according to a new report, the technology giant maintained a hands-free management style. Unfortunately, this not only led to increased technical problems and delays for State of Decay 3, but it also resulted in an increasingly toxic workplace.

Undead Labs hit it big with the original State of Decay game, an open-world zombie survival simulator that blew up much larger than anyone expected. About one month after releasing a larger but relatively unpolished sequel, the indie studio was acquired by Microsoft and State of Decay 2 became a live-service game. Problems began arising when State of Decay 3 entered production.

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A recent report by Kotaku states that right from the beginning, no one working on State of Decay 3 was on the same page. According to 12 current and former Undead Labs employees, all of whom requested anonymity to protect their identities and careers, the last few years have been a period of crisis. Microsoft's willingness to allow Undead Labs to continue business as usual may have allowed the studio to collapse from within as developers became overwhelmed and deadlines were missed.

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Apparently, development teams were constantly being broken up and shuffled around while people worked on features instead of establishing a core gameplay experience for State of Decay 3. This led to the creation of systems without anything to anchor them to. However, nine of the 12 employees also stated that the conflict between certain teams and developers was made worse by patterns of discrimination. Reportedly, this led to tensions between studio leadership and female, non-binary, and other marginalized employees. This included Anne Schlosser, the studio’s first head of people and culture, who many claimed did little to help the situation.

Women were allegedly systematically ignored, belittled, and spoken over in their areas of expertise. Schlosser apparently helped bring compensation packages more in line with industry standards, but often sided with bad actors in internal toxicity disputes. This seems to have led to the diverse talent that had been hired to expand Undead Labs instead leaving the studio in droves. In recent months, Undead Labs has begun a rash of new training sessions, which might be considered a turnaround. However, it remains to be seen what effect this will have on the company's workplace culture.

State of Decay 3 is currently in development for PC and Xbox Series X/S.

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Source: Kotaku