Spiders release fantasy RPG GreedFall 2 in early access, as its frustrated workers are offered concessions

Teer'd release

Look out, it's Spiders. It's fun to write about Spiders, because you get to frighten people for a moment, before they realise you're talking about the game development studio, Spiders. They have just released GreedFall 2: The Dying Land into early access. For those who don't remember the first GreedFall, it was a colonial-styled RPG about landing on the magical shores of another continent and getting into scrapes with monsters and frontiersfolk. This time the story is furthering the fantasy Columbian exchange by putting you in the role of a native who's been uprooted against their will and taken to the "old world". The game's release comes against a backdrop of dissatisfaction in the studio. But workers have gained some concessions in talks.

Spiders say that this release includes the "beginning of the main quest", and note that extensions to that story will be drip fed in future updates. Aside from that the release includes three regions to explore, six companion characters to party up with, and six skill trees to clamber up. Future updates are marked for unspecified times in "autumn" and "winter", and will bring further companions, plus side quests related to those sword-swinging pals, along with new regions and a crafting system.

Behind the scenes, there have been grumbles of dissatisfaction from workers at the studio. At the beginning of the month roughly half the studio signed a letter calling for a strike. This was to address their frustrations at working conditions in the company, including "global mismanagement, turnover and recruitment problems, unacceptable delays in achieving gender equality and parity, important lack of transparency, denial of problems... and blocked negotiations."

The studio management replied that those accusations were false, saying they "in no way reflect the reality of the day-to-day working life of the company's employees and are an attack on the reputation of the studio, whose teams are fully mobilized to produce quality games."

Since then, the French union representing the workers, the Syndicat des Travailleurs/ses du Jeu Vidéo (STJV) have said on Xitter that talks between the union and company have yielded some promises from management, including an "audit" of working conditions and a "bonus based on GreedFall 2 Early Access performance." (Comments translated by Google.) What do you know, it's almost as if collective action works. Huh!

Regardless of the studio's inner conflict, GreedFall 2 will have to improve on the team's previous games if it wants to impress some players. The first GreedFall didn't wow Astrid very much in their review. "In GreedFall, the first three hours make you want to astrally project out of your body and float away to do or see literally anything else," they said, "and then you reach the island of Teer Fradee and you’re like, 'Oh! This is actually mediocre!'"

Spiders have a track record of making good-looking games with lots of flair and a promising hook, but upon playing they reveal themselves to be so-so. Steelrising was a steampunky soulslike with a French Revolution angle that made Alice B shrug. They also made The Technomancer and Mars: War Logs, neither of which shone particularly brightly. Richard Cobbett summed up this general trend in his Bound By Flame review, saying it "dreams of being epic, but ends up just feeling slight - RPG action that would love to be in the same company as The Witcher and Dragon Age, but instead has to sit with the likes of Game of Thrones: The Game." Perhaps this sequel can bring them a step further to their BioWare-in-their-heydey aspirations.