Crysis 2 developer Crytek is on the offensive this week, denying accusations that it mistreats its employees and treats them like "disposable pieces of meat to be discarded at will." A Tumblr blog, "hire and fire Crytek," accused the developer of treating its employees "as disposable pieces of meat to be discarded at will" and described the Frankfurt studio as hostile workplace where management had "unlawfully fired employees" and forced out senior developers who the company thought could be replaced by younger and less-experienced hires. The blog also claimed that several former employees had successfully sued the company "and won settlements."
In an interview with Crytek co-founder Avni Yerli, Develop brought the topic up. Yerli responded by saying that the complaints were misleading.
"One thing that will always be the same is that Crytek respects and values its employees very highly, and equally--that's very important. Whether it's an intern, whether it's a director, it doesn't change; everyone is important," Yerli said, adding, "It is very distressing for us to think that an individual thinks we have been treating them unfairly. It's very disappointing."
"Well in Germany it is common sense, if you release someone, sometimes they get bad legal advice and basically think they can make unreasonable requests like huge severance packages," Yerli said. "What we offered them they clearly didn't like but it was more than legally required. So they go to court and ask for much more, but in the end they end up getting less or what we offered in the first place, and just go through the pain [of the whole legal process]. 'Won' the lawsuits isn't the right term. I don't want to make glory out of this. We are not proud of 'winning.' This is something sad that happened between us and people we used to work with. We haven't been found to have unlawfully fired these people, but we don't want to go to court with our co-workers either."
Source: GameSpot
