This old news I didn’t know about until someone mentioned it in passing.
A People Make Games investigation into three noted indie studios—Mountains (Florence), Fullbright (Gone Home, Tacoma), and Funomena (Wattam)—that included interviews with 24 employees revealed troubling allegations about high-level toxicity at all three of them. Working is a weird world:
The situation at Mountains was bad enough that in 2020 the studio implemented a policy that allowed any employee to decline a one-on-one interaction with Ken if they felt he was out of line, and actually came up with a safe word—"pause"—that would end a conversation immediately. As another employee put it, "What kind of studio needs a safe word, though?"
Robin Hunicke seems like Michael Scot but scary and vicious:
Messy breakups, interpersonal conflicts, her opinions about people's dating lives, whether people were in therapy or not—these were apparently all subjects of discussion for Hunicke. Even comments about people's personal appearances would be discussed.
Most disappointing is that Steve Gaynor consistently drove women out of his company by Steve Jobsing them in particular. He seemed like a good guy on Idle Thumbs, but then again, mostly he wasn’t talking to women when he was on the podcast.