Team Bondi Wars: Ex-employees want to “destroy” the company

14 July 2011

In this week’s round of He-Said, She-Said: Team Bondi Special Edition, lead programmer Dave Hieronymous has criticised the public controversy about the studio’s alleged working conditions.

“What is the motivation behind these attacks on Team Bondi? If the motivation were to see improvement in the working conditions at Team Bondi, then I’m all for it,” Hieronymous writes in a blog post over on Gamasutra.

“However, some of these comments in recent stories seem to go beyond that. Some ex-employees who left the company years ago want to see Team Bondi destroyed. They want to see 35 game developers out of a job. That seems to me to be a less laudable motivation.”

The drama started a few weeks back when former employees came out accusing Team Bondi CEO Brendan McNamara of being “the angriest person” ever, alongside allegations of 100-hour weeks and an increasingly hostile working environment during the development of LA Noire.

“No-one at Team Bondi is under the illusion that crunching is a good way to work and we’re actively working to learn from our mistakes for our next project,” adds Hieronymous. “The people at Team Bondi are great to work with and I’m confident that we can make Team Bondi a leading game studio on the international stage.”

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