XSEED Games is currently under fire for not crediting former members of staff. This is all tied to its policy to only acknowledge its current members of staff.
According to Eurogamer, the US company which specialises in the translation of Japanese games has been attacked on social media, after former localisation producer Brittany Avery revealed on Twitter how her name had been removed from the credits of the PlayStation 4 title The Legends of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel and quite possibly the sequel as well.
XSEED felt obliged to issue its own statement via Twitter, explaining how it appreciated the hard work of everyone who had contributed, but the company policy was to only credit current members of staff. The tweet further explained how the company has never credited staff members for individual roles or when an employee has departed prior to a game’s release.
Unsurprisingly, there was a huge backlash to this response – with many replies to this message demanding the company change its policy immediately and patch in updated credits acknowledging all staff members (current and former) who had worked on these game projects. This has also reignited debates about unionisation for video game developers.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time this sort of incident has happened within the industry before and it probably won’t be the last.