“I have regrets over the whole thing, obviously,” they said. Reece now works as lead writer for Route 59 Games.

“And yet Chucklefish management still considered it wholly acceptable to continue using unpaid workers to complete their game.” “When the game’s beta released in December 2013, it sold over a million copies in its first month,” Reece said. Later, Reece began to suspect exploitation especially when Starbound began to attract significant income through crowdfunding and pre-orders. Additionally, there were already a number of other contributors, many of them teenagers like me, who weren’t getting paid.” That is obviously not true, but it’s a very easy lie for an eager teenager to swallow. “I thought that the experience and exposure I gained from working on the game would be enough compensation. “This felt normal and fine and exciting because I didn’t value myself or my work,” said Reece. Reece recalled being asked by Brice if working for free would be a problem. “He very consciously manipulated and exploited not only myself, but almost everyone on and around the team.” “I was a teenager with no game development experience, and I was taken advantage of by Finn Brice,” Reece said. Like many unpaid workers, their job title was “contributor.” Reece worked on the game’s lore and narrative while also managing forums, often late into the night. Reece worked on Starbound for almost two years, between 20. In a series of interviews with Polygon, Reece and other former developers on Starbound spoke of their time working with Brice in scathing terms, and included allegations of bullying and harassment. “I also witnessed a lot of inappropriate behavior.” I was really naive and too afraid to ask to be paid, because anyone who did would be screamed at.

Former worker Fetalstar, aka Christine, tweeted: “I put in at least a hundred hours of work, and didn’t see any sort of compensation. Other former workers came forward with similar stories of their own. But the issue was highlighted recently by a widely shared tweet thread from designer Damon Reece, in which they outlined how they, starting at the age of 16, “worked hundreds of hours” on Starbound and “wasn’t paid a single cent.” Some of these developer say they felt their inexperience was exploited by the company’s founder, Finn Brice.Īllegations of employee exploitation and difficult working conditions on Starbound have popped up in forums before.

Former developers who worked on Chucklefish’s 2014 indie hit Starbound say they worked on the game for free - sometimes logging hundreds of hours of labor.

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