After the launch of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum went less than smoothly, and the developers issued an apology. In addition, other developers have come forward with their stories of development hell.
One notable tale came from developer Ian Saterdalen, who is currently a lead producer at Mythical Games, and previously worked in various roles at Crystal Dynamics, Blizzard, Riot, and then BioWare at the time of Anthem’s development.
When Anthem was released, there had been months of hype from EA touting it as the next big thing in gaming. However, all that hype was lost on release when the game debuted clearly unfinished and lacking a definitive endgame.
According to Saterdalen, the dev team had to “pay the price” for the strict deadline imposed by the publisher. That price ended up being 90-hour weeks for 15 months.