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Sturgeon's House

General PC games master race thread. Everything about games. EVERYTHING.


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https://teletype.in/@korovany/ByWgv5hXE

   Atomic Heart is nearly or totally a scam.

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Gameplay footage is a staged "gameplay".
VR department (there are no real departments in this studio) was completely fired in summer of 2018
After that "cleaning" only 3 people were left in studio
Game development was "restarted" in summer after that
"Information about incompetent leadership is confirmed by 9 people.
Information about impulsive and frequent dismissals is confirmed by 10 people."

 

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   "Interlocutors note three key figures in the Mundfish managment These are Oleg Gorodishenin, Artem Galeyev and Robert Bagratuni. Opinion about individuals among the developers I surveyed was not very divided."

 

   "Robert Bagratuni (Maxim Zatsepin) - The CEO / Investor is a good advertiser and marketer who is responsible for the entire hype around Atomic Heart. He believes that the game is sold only by picture/visuals, so the gameplay and the plot can be neglected. Bad rumors were confirmed. Claims to it are based on incompetence in the field of gamedev. His skill as a marketer, no one condemns. When Anton Logvinov, who was also a friend of Zatsepin, came to the Mundfish office, he was surprised that everyone called him Robert.

 

   Oleg Gorodishenin - the producer - everyone with whom I spoke about the leadership, very unflatteringly speak about this person. I have not heard a single positive comment about him. After looking about him on the Internet, I came across one project that he had previously released on Steam with another team - Heroes of Scene. In all supports the CEO (Robert). According to the interlocutors, it does this to strengthen its position in the company and for the sake of financial gain. Explaining the CEO how to do the game is not even trying, although he has experience in game development. According to the interlocutors, is a friend of Robert Bagratuini, and occupies this position because of friendly relations. He joined the project when he was 19 years old. Now he is somewhere between 20-21. Also, the interlocutors indicate that it was Oleg who “buried” one of the versions of the product (it is not clear which version we are talking about), as well as the Soviet Lunopark VR."


   "Artem Galeev - a key person in the development of the game. Responsible for the whole design, the setting and everything that people like in this game. Almost everyone notes that he did most of the work. We can say that Atomic Heart is his personal project, which fell into the hands of the enterprising Oleg Gorodishenin. Artyom is an extremely ideological person who has been nurturing the concept of a game for many years."

 

   "Evgenia Sedova - the company is registered on her. According to interlocutors, is a lawyer and financial director formally. Officially - the owner of the company. She is a former model and owner of a model agency. Later rolled into Newmedia Stars and became the head of the computer graphics department. Does not understand anything in the design, but often interferes with it and interferes with the team. According to the interlocutors, she owns all the accounts - they are abroad. Interlocutors are not confident in specific countries. If there are those who can check the whole thing - check. I did not find the company Mundfish in Cyprus."

 

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   "Hence the main problem: the game made by the union of a marketer and an art designer, it looks beautiful and spectacular, but, as the developers say, it is not interesting to play."
   "The process of developing and adding features at the initial stages took place in the best traditions of gamedev. Someone from the management played a new game, saw a new feature there, and came to the office with the words: “Let's do this!”. So, for example, after playing DOOM, one of the leaders decided that the game needed spectacular finishing moves."

 

   "There is no project management. There is no development plan and backlog at least for the coming weeks. There can be no full and planned development cycle."

 

   "The project as of December 2018, according to interlocutors, was missing key positions - game designer, narrative designer, sound designer, motion designer and screenwriter.

 

   One of the interlocutors notes that there will most likely not be a game designer. This he associates with Robert's personal dislike for them."
"The team informed the management that it was damaging the development and it was impossible to work this way. No response from the leadership."

 

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   "Due to impulsive layoffs and poor management, the team lost valuable personnel every year. It is very difficult to find good new programmers - in Russia there are very few experienced developers in C ++ and UE4. Because of this, the game has very serious technical problems and a large number of bugs.

   According to some reports, the game works at about 20-40 FPS on, quote, "top pc."

   Again, almost everyone I spoke with confirmed the practice of frequent layoffs at Mundfish. A typical algorithm looks like this: the team employs several green guys (former students, juniors, that is, people without / with little experience) who do all the work that they are getting from above. After that, someone from the management does not like something (I was told about absolutely fucking crazy cases, but in order to preserve the anonymity of the interlocutors, I cannot tell them), and then there is an instant dismissal. People can be fired for minor mistakes, or for the fact that people were not liked by the leadership."

 

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   "For example, you can be invited to the position of Junior Level Designer, as a result you will manually rename a hundred gigabytes of assets. Because the project is a mess. As other interlocutors explained to me, hundreds of gigabytes of chaotic assets accumulated over the development period in 2017 due to juniors with no development experience and the lack of guidelines from the management."
   Due to frequent layoffs and changes of developers, the quality of the game also suffers. Most often programmers, 3D artists, and designers are laid off.

   To date, January 28, 2019, according to one of the developers, the game is 20% ready.


   "Several people confirmed that the studio’s employees were not employed by the Labor Code. Salaries are received in envelopes. Because of this, such frequent and unreasonable layoffs are possible. Several people were decorated as a PI. Although still a violation of the LC. Some dismissed people were thrown out without paying salaries. No holiday pay."
   "In 2018, more than 12 people were fired (with a team size of a 2 dozens people)."

 

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   "Several interviewees confirmed the practice of crunching on weekends at the development stage in 2017 and early 2018. But, due to the extremely poor management and the small number of high-quality developers, the results of the development were a stupor in development. Programmers for several weeks tried to make out what they were doing over the weekend. Soon, this practice was abandoned. Crunch nobody paid.

 

   At the initial stages, the team was often told about a quick release. But every month the release was postponed further and further. The experience of bringing such an ambitious project at that time was not enough, as well as strength. Therefore, now the release of the game is postponed until 2020, judging by the beta in 4Q2019."

 

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   "Initially, the leadership wanted to make Atomic Heart a VR game. This is evidenced by the early vacancies in Mundfish and Oleg's recruitment of people for the "VR project at UE4". Further, according to the interlocutors, the project became a first-person shooter, but then again a VR game with a planned release under PSVR in December 2017. The management saw that the quality was not very good, and, according to the interlocutors, CEO (Robert) wanted to see a profit. But nothing worked. It was then, at the end of 2017, according to the interlocutors, that the first freeze of the project occurred."

   "After a short time, as noted by the interlocutors, in order to extract profits, it was decided to make a VR project on existing assets. That is how the Soviet Lunapark appeared. It is also noted that the main problem of the game is not its closure, but the fact that it was released in Early Access, and promised many features. One of these features is a story campaign. Promises, of course, were not fulfilled. The development was closed in early access. As noted by sources, due to the low profits of the project. Through SteamDB, you can verify that Early Access tags really were there. They were removed from the game on July 23, 2018."

 

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   "The CEO (Robert) and the producer (Oleg), without telling the team anything, released the game on Steam. Developers found out about this by accident - when they saw the already published project."

 

85d8d38c-d438-4e1b-8763-7e35be38c946.png

^After Soviet Lunapark VR servers were announced to be shot down

 

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   "In parallel with the development of the Soviet Lunapark, an unnamed animator and Artem Galeyev made, according to the interlocutors, a completely fake trailer using a canceled project mechanic. In the trailer, renders of Maya-projects are used in conjunction with the renderer on the UE4 engine (most likely it means the Sequencer UE4). Moments with the renderers, I chose from the video on the description of the interlocutors. The sound is completely superimposed, as noted by the sources."

 

   "The trailer, according to interlocutors, was made for Electronic Arts. The delegation from EA came to the Mundfish office, but after seeing the real game, they were puzzled and left."

 

   "The latest gameplay is real gameplay on the engine. But:

   The sounds are most likely superimposed over the video during the editing phase. So did in all previous cases.
   The last months work was carried out to create a trailer. Many gameplay moments from the video are not ready. They were made prototypes in order to have something to show.

   Robots walk on the map on pre-registered paths. If you approach them, they will not react in any way.

   It is suggested that all the inscriptions in the last video (to find the key to the house) are simply inscriptions. On the engine, in the interface, but behind them there is no program logic and quests."
...
"According to the interlocutors, all the old programmers quit. In addition, 4 people were fired and 3 employees remained in the company. 
   In fact, 5 months ago, development began from scratch. Interlocutors indicate that this was the fault of the leadership. The project, starting at 17, changed several times, and the code base did not correspond (it was conducted on Blueprint). Because of this, the developers insisted that the game needs to restart in C ++. The developers tried to persuade the leadership of the months."

 

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   In the summer of 2018, the game was more complete than it is now. Due to the restart of the development, she rolled back into the gameplay. The interlocutors indicate that the rollback in the gameplay was very strong.

   The old version of Atomic Heart was a street shooter, where you walk through the rooms and kill enemies. The game was played in 15 minutes."

"But the end will be very deplorable: the game, with the current state of affairs, will come out very shabby, boring, poorly optimized and will simply fall victim to its ambitions. With all its magnificent art direction, fresh concept and attention from the press, the project will simply be impermissible to have a mediocre gameplay and technical component."

 

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The interlocutors claim that the company's accounts are located abroad. In addition, they note that there will be no refands for pre-orders of the game.

 

   TL:DR

  1. God awful management
  2. No manpower (sometimes as low as 3 guys)
  3. Terrible working conditions, LC/law breaking cases
  4. Anti-consumer behavior and practice (Soviet Lunapark VR as example)
  5. Strange shenanigans of owners of company with company's finances
  6. No direction, no game designers, no script writers and so on
  7. Game development is total mess on all fronts - engine, features etc.

   Avoid Atomic Heart.

 

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