Squad, developers of Kerbal Space Program, are being accused by several former employees that despite Kerbal Space Program’s massive success, employees are being paid less than $3,000 a year.
A 4chan user claiming to be Squad’s former Media Director (named PDtv) has spoken about the studio. This information was revealed as the NDA the employees signed when they joined the company has expired. PDtv says Squad used their initial employees to create a foundation for the game, once the game was created the team were subsequently replaced. PDtv’s exact quote is:
“Welcome to Squad. We pay you like shit, then fire you when your work is finished so we can just take it over and maintain it.”
PDtv also mentions he was being paid $2,400 as his annual salary. Squad are based in Mexico, where the minimum wage per month is only $100. Employees are expected to work forty hours per week, eight hours a day. While $2,400 in Mexico may seem like good money considering the minimum wage in that country, Squad continue to hire international staff who are expected to work the same hours.
The 4chan post calls out four former employees, though it seems two of those employees have spoken out. Anthony ‘Damion Rayne’ Keeton wrote a post on Reddit that tried to remain neutral on the issue, as did Rob ‘N3XI5’ Nelson on his blog.
Considering Kerbal Space Program has sold over one million copies on Steam, you would think the company would pay their staff more than $2,400 dollars. If you are wondering where all the money is going, back in 2014, Polygon wrote a feature that mentioned two of the co-founders of Squad’s future ambitions (Adrian Goya and Ezequiel Ayarza). Goya planned to create a record label and Ayaarza wanted Squad to produce a film he had written. We haven’t heard anything of these projects in the last two years, but if we hear anything we’ll make sure to write about it.
