Claims surrounding BioWare Sacramento and one of its co-founders, Mark Otero, have surfaced on Reddit. The post, titled “The truth behind Mark Otero and Klicknation (BioWare Sacramento, EA Capital Games),” claims that the company was founded on “lies, crime, and exploiting [Otero’s] employees.”
The original Reddit post, presumably written by a current or former employee of BioWare Sacramento, goes into great detail about the company’s alleged criminal and, at the very least, arguably unethical practices. Highlights include using pirated software, luring employees to Sacramento with false promises, stealing copyrighted images, and taking part in the always popular tradition of cloning games. Supposedly, even the working conditions strayed from being simply unethical, to actively illegal.
“60-100 hour weeks were the norm, and not a dime of overtime was paid to any employee (nobody qualified for overtime exemption under California law ),” the post reads.
According to my own source — who spoke with former employees of the studio — these accusations are “mostly accurate.”
You might remember the name BioWare Sacramento from a couple years back, before they were given the EA regional branding treatment and were still known as KlickNation. The company was founded by Otero and Kenneth Walton (a confessed forger and eBay scammer, as the Reddit post doesn’t fail to mention.) At the time, the developer was responsible for social games like Six Gun Galaxy and Starship Command. That was before they were acquired by EA for a reported $35 million.
I’ve reached out to EA for comment on the situation. I’ll be sure to update the story as it develops.
[Source: Reddit]
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