A new report from Spanish publication 3DJuegos points to poor working conditions at MercurySteam, the studio behind Metroid Dread, and more recently, Blades of Fire, which launched earlier this year. The report includes interviews with both current and former members of MercurySteam's development team, who claim that the studio was mandating overtime that should have been voluntary, and that a crunch culture has been established where an eight-hour-a-day work week is an easy week compared to the new 10-hour normal.
According to the report, these issues began before the launch of Blades of Fire, with a new work schedule implemented called "Distribucion Irregular de la Jornada (DIJ)," which essentially meant teams within MercurySteam would be subjected to longer hours, but the overtime compensation was never directly made clear. It was also never actually mandatory, with the company's HR department admitting, after employees poked holes in the new system's implementation, that these hours were not actually mandatory.
According to one of the interviewed employees (via translation), "At first, they said the extra hours were completely mandatory, without distinguishing between the DIJ hours and the new ones, and they talked about the need for overtime as if we were in some kind of crisis. They used exaggerated language to describe the company's situation, but also to cover up the fact that they were proposing unstructured and unregulated measures. They told us overtime would be assigned as needed, even though overtime legally has to be recorded and agreed upon by both parties, and there was no system in place for that."
This new DIJ schedule was also reportedly not something that MercurySteam kept a record of, at least on paper. From the management's mouth to the employees' ears was how members of the studio learned they were on this new schedule, which has meant a new normal of 10-hour work weeks for some teams. But, critically, not for others, as some teams have yet to be submitted to the new work schedule, while others have reportedly rarely been taken off of it.
Issues of crunch were only exacerbated when Blades of Fire released and failed to hit sales expectations, with the game's publisher publicly saying the game had "underperformed." By that point, as teams had been crunching for months to get the game out the door, the crunch hours had become a normalized state for some developers. The report also claims that by August 2025, developers at the studio had started to get laid off, with some teams shrinking, though, once again, not all teams were treated equal, as others kept hiring.
Internal communications between employees have also reportedly been largely shut down, with non-work-related chats closed, and partitions set up around the office. The layoffs, crunch culture, and mixing messages from HR have all participated to a low point for employee morale, as the studio's future remains uncertain. Still, though, they are reportedly crunching on the studio's next project, which is currently unannounced.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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