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Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter has issued an apology concerning his previous claim that staff at Team Bondi didn’t have his sympathy for their alleged working conditions.
Amid new revelations that Team Bondi owes its staff £830,000 in unpaid severance, Pachter said the situation was “embarrassing, especially with overworked employees left unpaid”.
In the past several months, studio insiders have exposed ‘brutal’ working conditions during the development of Team Bondi’s only game before it closed, LA Noire. The revelations sparked widespread outrage across the industry.
Pachter himself caused further uproar when he appeared to defend the studio’s treatment of its employees.
“I’ve never heard a developer say ‘I don’t work overtime and I don’t work weekends’,” he said at the time.
“If you’re getting into the industry, you are going to work plenty of hours. I hear from lots of people on Twitter about these Team Bondi guys in Australia, [hearing complaints about how] they’re young and right out of school, well, don’t pick that as a profession then.”
Pachter has now clarified his position on his personal Twitter account, claiming that the crunch complaints were “fair if workers were unpaid”.
“I apologise,” he said.
