If I heard that a company was taking this policy with a "normal" game, I would consider it very shabby treatment of their employees. For a company building an MMO, the development of which takes years longer than it does on other games, to take this policy, is nothing less than despicable.

But for various reasons this is an industry with relatively quick turnover - I'd estimate that the average tenure with a given game developer is 4-5 years, and even that may be pretty high. When most MMOs take something like 6 years or more to develop, how unfair is it to not recognize the people who left the game just as part of the natural churn of the industry? Just because an individual developer felt that they didn't want to commit 7 years of their career to a single project, should they be punished? Why should someone who only worked on the project for its last 6 months get recognition, while someone who worked on it 3 years and left a year before its completion doesn't get their efforts recognized at all?

Shabby AND despicable.

This kind of behavior from any company is totally unacceptable. If there aren't any already, there should be laws allowing employees to sue their employers for this specific kind treatment...

I sincerely hope other game companies will see this exposure of injustice as an example and fair warning. Mythic, for me, is now clearly out of the question.

"Over the years, we've had hundreds of people work on the game, and we thank everyone who helped us bring our Warhammer passion to life, but only current employees that have continued until the end will be credited in the final game."

I think there will plenty of agreement that leaving them off the credits does not constitute 'thanks' for years of effort. Credits aren't just wasted space, they are a visible record of the effort that goes into the products they are attached to. What happens when one of the Uncredited attempt to claim working on this project later in their career? In a medium like games, it's not really enough to just pay someone to work, you have to recognize their efforts.

All those who read this article: don't just sit there all shocked, be sure to head over to the IGDA Credit Standards page (http://www.igda.org/credit/), see what's being put together there and comment or pitch in. It's a worthy effort!

Can you say "union"?

This kind of activity has been standard in the industry for some time now. When people leave they are then "punished" by management to be left out of the credits. It is terrible and it will continue, until the industry creates a "union" as they have in movies.

People that are in the "Thanks" section should at the very least be named. Not some backhanded compliment like "We thank all the people who are no longer here."

Shame on the "small" people who keep doing this.

Reminds me of both Rockstar's Manhunt 2 (missing credits of people from Rockstar Vienna who contributed the majority of the game but their studio was closed down before the game was finalized), and Capcom's Okami (entire Clover Studio staff roll missing).

Imagine anyone one in the film industry doing that...

And it's not like Lotr trilogy didn't take over 6 years and thousands (yes, thousands) of people to complete !

I should also have mentioned, regarding the IGDA Credit Standards: Advocate good crediting standards to your teams, get people interested early in how the credits will be handled, how their work will be recognized. If you're in a position to control the crediting, reassure your team that you will handle it responsibly and plan ahead. Start gathering the crediting information now, there's no good excuse not to.

Can you say 'boycott' to all games made by Mythic Entertainment (and perhaps EA as well) going forward? Maybe loss of players (and profit) will affect their judgment to pass a sentence like this.

This is a great example of why unions are needed. The television, motion picture, and music industries are light years ahead of us with this kind of thing. Just try this in any of these other industries and see how well that flies.

Their "Credit" was that they got paid - how a company wants to run a string list of people that worked on the game is their own business.
If I see someone's name in the credits of a game, then I know (as someone that might hire them) that they stayed through til the end - that is a HUGE thing.

Keep in mind, Eric, that compensation for employment often includes much more than just the money you make. People appreciate receiving benefits, working with good people, being given the opportunity to be challenged and motivated as well as being respected for the contributions they have made.

Proper crediting is one part of the compensation that a good company can provide. It rewards the employees by giving them due recognition, it betters the industry by promoting an environment of mutual respect, and it's an attractive intangible benefit that the companies can offer prospective employees. It's win-win to me.

To me the difference in opinion here seems to be between the idea that employees should be honored to be in the credits, that it is a gift in some way, a badge of honor for having stayed through til the ship date - versus the idea that the credits are a simple list of the people who contributed to a project. Why even argue about it, if it is a simple list? I'm not going to demonize anyone who believes in the former philosophy, but I am going to strongly advocate my position and point to the well-established movie industry as an excellent example to copy.

The fact that this is a controversy at all shows how much game development is an entertainment industry and not anything like commercial software development. As long as that mindset persists, the industry will continue to exhibit its current set of problems: low pay, long hours, blockbuster-dependent financial strategy, high churn, and more.

But who knows, maybe that's part and parcel of being on the creative end of the creativetechnical spectrum. Maybe it's a necessary component of successful game development. I guess my point is that, if game development is going to continue to be run like an entertainment industry, then it will need to move further in that direction to include things like unions and all the apparatus built up in Hollywood. The other choice is to start acting more like a commercial software business, and I suspect that those who work in the industry wouldn't want that.

There is only one REAL purpose of the end game credits and clearly EA Mythic doesn't understand that purpose. The purpose is to recognize and name those people who worked on the game, nothing else. As a big fan of the game Warhammer Online, which I play almost daily right now, I'm very disappointed in Mythic.

Luckily due to the nature of MMOs they can patch the game and add those people that should be in the credits at any time. Let's see if they man up and do it...

Whoever thinks credits are only about making the credited feel good is living in a make-believe world. Game credits on the resume are a critical credential for anyone seeking a job--just read a few Gamasutra job postings and see.

For something with such an important dollars-and-cents value to be left to the whim of the employer is terrible. Every game industry employee should have their right to game credits written into their contract in legally enforceable form. If it takes a union to accomplish that, then the union will be doing a good thing.