LogInA new report says that Undead Labs faced mismanagement, burnout, and misogyny issues which is why the game got stuck in pre-production.
State of Decay 3, the open-world zombie survival game that is currently in the works at an American video game developer Undead Labs which is now a part of Microsoft Studios, was announced with a teaser trailer back in 2020. In March, Xbox head Phil Spencer called it one of his most anticipated games, although outside of that, little has been heard about the project.
According to a recent Kotaku report, State of Decay 3 remains stuck in pre-production as Undead Labs has struggled with alleged mismanagement, burnout, and misogyny. Kotaku's investigation centers around interviews with 12 of the studio's current and former employees who complained about the poor management of development teams and sexism.
State of Decay 3 got stuck in pre-production, as an already difficult development phase fell on a period of studio expansion and poor management decisions. Undead Labs employees were divided into small "strike teams" responsible for prototyping different features, but the communication between them was so weak which is why sometimes they were engaged in the same tasks.
"Every couple of months, after a milestone, teams would be completely broken up and shuffled around into new teams," one former developer said. "So there was no consistency with who worked on what system."
The situation was escalated by issues with the atmosphere in the team – employees complained that women and representatives of minorities in the studio were discriminated against for a long time, although over the past six months things have gone smoothly due to the influx of new people into the staff.
Now, some of the employees remain hopeful saying that Undead Labs is currently on the right track, and State of Decay 3 can still turn out to be a decent game. "It could be such a cool game and we’ve got a lot of great people working on it, and I just hope we don’t repeat the terrible habits of the last few years," shared one of the current developers.
You can learn more about State of Decay 3 and Undead Labs by reading full Kotaku's report. Also, don't forget to join our new Reddit page, our new Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.