Report reveals claims of troubling working conditions and crunch at Blades of Fire developer

A new report points to crunch leading to longer hours without proper compensation at Castlevania: Lords of Shadows and Blades of Fire developer MercurySteam. Employees claim that the team morale was impacted by these practises, which pushed unofficial, longer working days into action.

The report comes from Spanish outlet 3DJuegos, stating that a series of HR policies were introduced in the earlier stages of the year. In January, a new work schedule called DIJ was introduced, which essentially boiled down to more hours without clear extra pay.

The system enforced an extra hour of work a day, but employees state that many were pushed to add an additional hour on top of that. The main reason given was allegedly "production needs." Not every department was given the same rules, which led to reported chaos at the developer, as even the team leaders enforcing these changes didn't have a clear idea of what they actually were. Nothing was ever made official or written down in clear terms.

"At first, they said the extra hours were completely mandatory, without distinguishing between the DIJ hours and the new ones, and they talked about the need for overtime as if we were in some kind of crisis," said one employee (via GamePressure). "They used exaggerated language to describe the company's situation — but also to cover up the fact that they were proposing unstructured and unregulated measures. They told us overtime would be assigned as needed, even though overtime legally has to be recorded and agreed upon by both parties... and there was no system in place for that."

Despite crunching to get the game out, MercurySteam's latest release didn't manage to attract audiences, and Blades of Fire fell short of its commercial expectations. We'll have to see what lies ahead for the studio in the future.