What happened to Striking Distance Studios’ The Callisto Protocol? The spiritual successor to Dead Space launched in an apparent unpolished state, with performance issues on PC and poor execution in several gameplay areas. The result had the game scoring mixed reviews, publisher KRAFTON immensely scaling back sales projections, and eventually had Striking Distance Studios CEO Glen Schofield leaving the developer. And in a recent interview with PCGamesN, Schofield confirmed those suspicions regarding the release of The Callisto Protocol in a bit of a post mortem, stating that KRAFTON had pushed the game out too soon.
In the interview, Schofield claimed that initially, Striking Distance was given a lot of leeway when it came to developing The Callisto Protocol. However, KRAFTON later insisted on a December 2022 release.
“I wanted about three and a half more months [of development time],” said Schofield, who says that he was led to believe that KRAFTON agreed to the request. “In October or September ‘21, I was told ‘You’re going to get the time. Put whatever you want into the game.’ So I spent that Christmas holiday just designing and coming up with ideas with some of the guys. And then January comes around and some of the [KRAFTON] folks come over and they just said ‘no no no. It’s December 2022.’
Schofield stated that in response to the December release date, he stated that the team would have to “accelerate everything by three and a half months,” which also required more developers to join the project. Complicating matters was the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the mass resignations that were going on in the industry as a result.
“You have a studio of 200 people. Ten to 20 people a month were getting sick, and they were getting sick for weeks. We were devastated. And then on top of that, in ‘21, we had the great resignation. 49 people quit, because everybody’s paying through the roof, and so people are leaving for $10,000 more.” As a result, Striking Distance had to cut four bosses and two enemy types because of the crunch.
When asked if he would have done anything differently during production, Schofield says he would have more firm about the release date. “I would have put my foot down. I’m not shipping it, [saying] ‘If you want the game to ship, you come and take over the studio.'”
The Callisto Protocol is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam.
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