10 Insane Ways Video Games Were Kept Under Wraps
3. QA Testers Were Put In Windowless Rooms - Mortal Kombat & Injustice
The widening dialogue about "crunch culture" in games development in recent years has shone a light on the conditions under which games are created and polished.
There have been countless exposes about unreasonable, even illegal practises inflicted upon artists, programmers, and QA testers working on major AAA games, and in 2019 one such piece took aim at NetherRealm Studios, the team behind the Mortal Kombat and Injustice games.
The report from USgamer, released just days after Mortal Kombat 11 hit stores, included allegations from employees who worked on Mortal Kombat 9, X, and Injustice 2, that they were wildly overworked and underpaid.
One of the more curious claims refers to the QA department specifically, who per the delicate nature of their job - to comb through every aspect of the game - were put in a windowless room, a "box-like, renovated garage" to perform their duties.
Though it's common for AAA games to be developed within a contained environment to curb the potential for leaks, would it really have killed NetherRealm to put their testers in a room with one-way glass, so they could see outside but nobody could see in? Jeez.