Fntastic, the developer behind Steam's most wishlisted game The Day Before, has defended its use of unpaid workers.
Speaking to Eurogamer, the company claimed every employee, paid or not, is a volunteer, because "we always try to bring in proactive people with open hearts".
Fntastic categorises its workers in two camps: full-time volunteers and part-time volunteers. The former are regular, paid employees, while the latter are unpaid workers who contribute to game development, "ranging from translating to community moderating" according to the online application form. These unpaid workers can "get cool rewards, participation certificates, and free codes".
"The company's values are built upon the idea of volunteering which means that every person who works or volunteers here is doing that willingly, acts with dedication, and enthusiasm, and supports the team by any means possible," Fntastic said.
"We have many people around the world who are helping us out in many ways, they are part-time volunteers. They help with any projects that we have. While full-time volunteers are the employees of the company. We share these values within the company because we always try to bring in proactive people with open hearts."
The company faced criticism online following an update to its website that included the dedicated volunteers page. You can see an example below:
Unpaid work at a AAA studio to create a MMO on UE5 in 2022? How about Fntastic pays its workers that are helping deliver a massive project? It's gotta be a joke oof
— Jordan Dragon (@jordanDragon_) June 27, 2022
Fntastic revealed last month that The Day Before - an open world survival MMO - had been delayed until next year as the studio switched over to Unreal Engine 5. "The transition to a more advanced and adapted open worlds engine, will make the gameplay of The Day Before even more fantastic," it told IGN. "The new release date of the game will be March 1st, 2023."
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.