The Callisto Protocol didn't exactly have the best launch. Severe performance and stuttering issues saw the game receive a Mostly Negative score on Steam, but even if you can manage to ignore that, the story isn't quite as compelling as that of the game it takes inspiration from, Dead Space. Striking Distance has put out an update that should fix most of the stuttering issues, and director, Glen Schofield has also revealed why the game launched with performance issues.Greg Miller recently tweeted that Schofield will be streaming The Callisto Protocol with the crew of Kinda Funny Games. As you'd expect, a number of comments popped up about how the game has performance issues and is an "unoptimized mess". Schofield replied to one of these comments saying, "Being fixed. A wrong file was patched. Any minute. Just freakin error by someone rushing."While this gives us a slight understanding of why the game launched in the state it did, there are two issues with this statement. First, it sounds like Schofield is trying to take the blame off himself, but more importantly, it tracks with Schofield's earlier comment about glorifying crunch culture.
Back in September, he posted a Tweet which attracted ire from the game development community. "I only talk about the game during an event," he said. "We r working 6-7 days a week, nobody's forcing us. Exhaustion, tired, Covid, but we're working. Bugs, glitches, perf fixes. 1 last pass thru audio. 12-15 hr days. This is gaming. Hard work, Lunch, dinner working. U do it cause you luv it".
Schofield received a lot of flak for this comment, after thich he deleted his Tweet. Last month, he said that ''The social media backlash was educational and I hope it's a catalyst for change overall. This one was on me."
However, we still need to consider why this "someone" was "rushing". Could it be that they were rushing because they were being rushed? After all, developers working on the game did come out and admit to the presence of crunch culture at Striking Distance, with "six to seven days a week" and "12-hour days".