“Oppressive” Work Culture At Moon Studios Reportedly Led To Microsoft Split

“Oppressive” Work Culture At Moon Studios Reportedly Led To Microsoft Split

Back in 2020, Ori and the Blind Forest developer Moon Studios had announced that it would be partnering with 2K’s Private Division label on a new title – instead of continuing its existing work with Microsoft on the beloved Ori series of games. Well, unfortunate new details about the company have shed some new light on why Microsoft and Moon Studios went their separate ways.

According to an investigative report from GamesBeat’s Dean Takahashi, several former and current Moon Studios employees have opened about the company being an “oppressive” place to work. Many of these sources have attributed their struggles at the company to the unprofessional conduct its founders Thomas Mahler and Gennadiy Korol – who have both been accused of being overly controlling and dismissive toward employees. Additionally, several chat logs allegedly reveal that racist and sexist jokes were casually tossed around during online meetings with Mahler and Korol.

According to an anonymous source, Microsoft soon caught wind of this situation at the company as well. During the a recent GamesBeat Decides podcast, the show’s hosts discussed that this was likely the reason Microsoft is no longer working with Moon Studios after Ori and the Will of the Wisps:

It’s not like this culture is like something that is… contained. Microsoft is well aware of what this company is like, and when they got done with Ori 2 there is a reason that Private Division is publishing their next game and not Microsoft. I was told this explicitly this morning, that Microsoft was aware and everyone understood that… that’s what this company is like. And so, it’s clearly not the kind of thing where it’s like “Oh, this is just a couple of jokes happening on Discord.”

Following this report, both Mahler and Korol responded to the allegations with the following statement:

“We don’t believe the experiences suggested by your questions are representative of the more than 80 Moon Studios team members who are thriving and doing great work every day — nor do we believe they are representative of the experiences of former members of our team. In fact, we are very proud of our history of making people happy, advancing their careers, and contributing to their financial success.

We built Moon Studios with a simple premise. First, we wanted to create a distributed studio that is not limited by geographic boundaries enabling us to draw the top talent from around the world. Second, we wanted to foster a vibrant culture where our team thrives and delivers the very best work in our industry. And finally, from day one we set out to share the profits and rewards of our efforts with the full team. We believe we have succeeded.

What makes our team so powerful is our global and cultural diversity — we have team members working from more than 40 different countries across four continents — and a flat studio structure that allows everyone to speak honestly and directly and to challenge and push each other to do our very best work. We purposely set out to create a different kind of studio — one that encourages creativity, open communication, collaboration, and performance.

The result has been two award-winning games — with more on the horizon — and a team of professionals who enjoy working together, are excelling and breaking new ground in our industry, while also sharing in the financial success of Moon Studios. If at times we are brutally direct in our critiques and challenges, we are also genuine and vocal in our praise. We are incredibly proud of everything we have built and achieved together.

Finally, we appreciate the irony that we — an Austrian and an Israeli Jew — started this multicultural enterprise. We view each other as brothers. And, like brothers, we sometimes argue and frequently tease each other. We have made jokes at our own expense about the differences in our backgrounds — and there may have been times that our teasing of each other has come off as insensitive and may have made others feel uncomfortable.

Moon Studios has prospered for 12 years. We have grown and learned so much over all of these years. We have been privileged to work with many, many great, and extremely talented people. We are truly grateful and proud of our team — those who are here today as well as those who spent time at Moon and have since moved to other ventures – and we are happy to have made a positive difference in their lives. We are not perfect but we deeply care about our talent and are constantly working hard to improve. If we have ever made anyone feel uncomfortable or let anyone down — we regret that and we will always strive to do better.”

— Thomas Mahler and Gennadiy Korol

We’ll report back if this situation develops in the future. Stay tuned.

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