Former THQ president Jason Rubin, who joined the struggling company in 2012, has submitted
a story to GamesIndustry International detailing adversities faced by Ukrainian developer 4A Games while developing Metro: Last Light, painting the team as underdogs who struggled against dreadful working conditions, a low budget, and unrealistic expectations.
"Let's be honest: 4A was never playing on a level field," writes Rubin. "The budget of Last Light is less than some of its competitors spend on cut scenes, a mere 10 percent of the budget of its biggest competitors." On top of that, Rubin laments the "irrational requirement of THQ's original producers to fit multiplayer and co-op into the same deadline and budget."
It gets worse. According to Rubin, the team "sat on folding wedding chairs, literally elbow to elbow at card tables in what looks more like a packed grade school cafeteria than a development studio." Dev kits and high-end PCs had to be smuggled into Ukraine in backpacks to avoid the sticky hands of "thieving customs officials." Pile on frequent power outages and broken government-run heating which frequently led to below-freezing working conditions, and Rubin says that 4A's success is equivalent to that of the Jamaican bobsledding team which finished ahead of the US in the 1994 Olympics.
