Category: IGN

The Day Before is an upcoming post-apocalyptic open world MMO in which players must contend with zombies and other survivors in equal measure.

It quickly grabbed the attention of those looking to fulfill their own Walking Dead or The Last of Us-esque fantasies and exploded to become Steam’s most wishlisted game, but excitement eventually turned to doubt for many fans after several delays and other controversies surrounding developer Fntastic.

Now with a release date of November 10, 2023, IGN has chronicled the ups and downs of The Day Before’s development as it gears up for its long anticipated launch.

Plain sailing.

On January 29, 2021, Fntastic announced The Day Before with a five minute trailer. It showed two players driving into a city and looting various cars and shops before getting into a firefight with another group, and then fleeing from a hoard of zombies that were attracted to the noise. The graphics were of a higher quality than many games released since, the gameplay was seamless, and the world was open, full, and completely interactive.

It gained the attention of the gaming community, who looked on hopefully at what appeared to be a mix of Ubisoft’s The Division and PlayStation blockbuster The Last of Us. And the next few months only gave fans more reason to get excited.

Fntastic co-founders Eduard and Aysen Gotovtsev appeared in a combat gameplay trailer in February to show off what they called “a real breakthrough for the MMO survival genre”. Adding to this idea, they told IGN at the time: “It’s no secret that [most survival MMO’s] are all built on the sandbox model, when you set goals for yourself and wander around the [deserted] world. In The Day Before, we reinvented everything from the in-game goals to the ways we approach the quality of the game mechanics.”

More and more game footage followed, with Fntastic releasing a quick look at vehicle gameplay in March and a hefty extended trailer in April. The latter increased the scope of The Day Before even more by showing off a completely new environment in the form of America’s great outdoors, with players exploring a lake, forests, and finally a creepy farm that all looked meticulously detailed. The Day Before blew up again, with the trailer being viewed more than one million times in a day.

The first release date.

Fntastic went quiet following this April gameplay video, not sharing much of the game beyond a few screenshots and concept images. Excitement began building again in October, however, as the developer shared The Day Before’s release date.

A calendar at the end of a new trailer joked the game wouldn’t be released until June 21, 2025, but slowly ticked down the years until Fntastic revealed The Day Before would launch on the same date in 2022, just eight months away at the time.

Fntastic made various other announcements, including that it was working on a completely new game called Propnight. IGN described it as a mix of Dead by Daylight and Prop Hunt, and without any complications at all, it launched just a few weeks later on November 30.

The Day Before once again slipped below the radar as Fntastic focused on pushing Propnight, but a brief trailer in January 2022 showed the game’s high end PC potential as it ran in 4K and with RTX turned on. It only reared its head again in May, one month before it was expected to launch, when Fntastic announced The Day Before’s first delay.

“Feeling and understanding the great responsibility that we face, with enormous gratitude in our hearts, we’re pleased to announce that The Day Before is switching to the new Unreal Engine 5 technology,” Fntastic said at the time.

“The transition to a more advanced and adapted open worlds engine will make the gameplay of The Day Before even more fantastic. In this regard, we inform you that the new release date of the game will be March 1st, 2023.”

Cracks begin to show.

It was seemingly the first time Fntastic hadn’t given fans exactly what they wanted. PC players upgrading their hardware in anticipation of the game’s release, which at this point was a measly six weeks away, had to wait another six months.

Despite cultivating a positively passionate fanbase over the course of a year and a half, this delay became the first of several incidents that caused some fans to become concerned over the state of the game, and of Fntastic itself.

Unlike its initial reveal, when Fntastic came out with a one-two punch of exciting news and gameplay clips, the opposite had now occurred. One month after the delay, the developer faced scrutiny after reports emerged surrounding its “volunteering culture”, meaning the use of unpaid workers.

Fntastic defended the practice, saying all of its employees, paid or not, were volunteers, because it “always [tries] to bring in proactive people with open hearts”. It categorized its workers in two camps: full-time volunteers and part-time volunteers. The former are regular, paid employees, while the latter are unpaid workers who contribute to game development. These unpaid workers can “get cool rewards, participation certificates, and free codes”.

It would be the last news on The Day Before for a while, with Fntastic only talking about Propnight throughout the rest of 2022. Having started its journey with such regular updates and gameplay showcases, Fntastic’s fans began raising concerns over just how quiet the developer had become.

Unhappy new year.

Outside of another minute-long gameplay trailer showing The Day Before running in 4K with RTX turned on, Fntastic had a rocky start to 2023 as a large portion of the game’s community seemingly turned on it altogether.

After sitting around the top of Steam’s most wishlisted games for almost two years, The Day Before’s Steam page was removed altogether following a trademark dispute. In a statement published to Twitter on January 25, the developer claimed that “Steam blocked [its] game page at the request of a private individual” who registered The Day Before trademark in the United States.

Saying it hadn’t been aware of the trademark issue until January 19, 2023, when it received the complaint, Fntastic said the dispute would be settled eventually but it would have to delay The Day Before as a result. This would push the game back to November 10, 2023: 17 months after it was originally meant to launch.

The situation soon unraveled further, as Fntastic admitted to IGN that the delay was planned even before the trademark dispute. “To be on the safe side, to ensure there are no more transfers, we, along with the publisher, chose November 10. That is a safe date, given the trademark dispute,” Eduard and Aysen Gotovtsev said.

“We’re very confident that this issue will be resolved since we have strong legal partners,” they added. “The extra time will allow us to better prepare for the release and make the overall improvements for the game. It will become even more polished, optimized, and content-filled.”

Fan revolt.

The trademark dispute, third delay, and conflicting messaging appeared to be just half the battle for Fntastic, as a large portion of The Day Before’s fanbase had seemingly turned on the developers.

The game’s Discord server and Reddit page erupted with complaints and concerns over the state of the game, with many saying they now believed it to be a scam and that Fntastic had been lying about progress.

“Of course this is a scam,” wrote TS-Slithers on Reddit. “The scam is that they produce gameplay video after gameplay video and build their YouTube channel until they have millions of followers, then they rug pull the game.”

Another user, TrueMyst, said they believed Fntastic had bitten off more than it could chew. “They realised how much work actually has to go into making a AAA-level title and they just can’t do it,” they wrote. “It’s not a scam, exactly. But it’s deceitful and quite frankly, really embarrassing.”

Fntastic itself replied to the chatter, maintaining that The Day Before is definitely real and will launch in November 2023. “The storm will calm down eventually, and time will put everything in its place. When the game comes out, people will finally see the truth,” it told IGN.

“We only believe in the final product. No matter what anyone says, you’ll see for yourself on November 10 this year. We hope that after the game’s success, we’ll give people faith that in this life, if you persevere toward a dream, it will come true, despite all the obstacles and doubts.”

Copycat accusations.

It was only a few days later on February 2, 2023, that more doubts were spawned in the community, however, when Fntastic released its first extended gameplay trailer since 2021. The ten minute video was seen by many as a hopeful return to form, with Fntastic finally showing off proper gameplay of The Day Before as it had in the early days and months following its reveal.

Certain scenes in the gameplay trailer looked familiar to some fans, however, and Reddit user PatFury lined up its opening shots with a Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War trailer from 2020. Starting at around 38 seconds in, the Call of Duty trailer has a shot looking down at people through bars, followed by a hooded soldier illuminated in red light, then a first person shot of someone walking through a dark room with another person in front of them, and then another shot of a soldier in red light.

The opening few seconds of The Day Before’s February 2023 gameplay video has a shot looking down at people through bars, followed by an armed person illuminated in red light, then a first person shot of someone walking through a dark room with another person in front of them, then another shot of someone in red light. The video then moves into other shots akin to what Fntastic has shown before and then quickly into brand new gameplay.

PatFury’s comparison also highlights comparable features between The Day Before and other games. These include its font’s similarities to The Last of Us, a screenshot similar to The Division, and more. Following these accusations, which were picked up by various media outlets and YouTube channels, Fntastic released a statement on Twitter about the dangers of disinformation.

“We all live in a time of disinformation and lack of fact-checking,” it said. “Anyone can say anything for views, and everyone will believe it. Disinformation needs to be dealt with as it can harm not only us but also other indies and small/medium studios. It also has a mental impact on the members of such teams.”

Upping communication.

Despite The Day Before’s Steam page and several of its YouTube videos having been taken down as a result of the trademark despite, Fntastic pledged to boost its communication efforts following the statement on disinformation.

Fans commenting on Twitter expressed to Fntastic their beliefs that issues of disinformation may not have occurred if the developer didn’t have long periods of not sharing updates on the game. As mentioned, Fntastic kicked off The Day Before’s marketing campaign by releasing four gameplay videos over four months, but didn’t release another for six months and then, outside of two minute-long clips, went quiet again for more than a year.

“We don’t have a marketing department at all. All our resources go to game development. But we’ll get better at communication,” Fntastic replied to one user. “We’ll improve communication and give more transparency,” it told another.

It followed up on this promise on February 12, 2023, by sharing an update (and subtly its opinion) on the trademark dispute. Fntastic presented what it called three facts.

“The so-called ‘owner’ of the rights to the title is the creator of the calendar app, which has nothing to do with the games category,” it said. “After we announced the game in 2021, he also wanted to take over the title and filed for trademarks ahead of us,” and finally: “He ambiguously offers to contact him to discuss something, but what?”

Fntastic finished: “We’ll fight. Power is in the truth.”

It then released a development vlog on February 16 showcasing how The Day Before had progressed from the beginning of its development in 2019 to its current state, and promised that more information on the game, its mechanics, world hub, base building, character customisation, quests, player interaction, and more would arrive in the coming months.

We don’t have a marketing department at all. All our resources go to game development. But we’ll get better at communications, thanks.

— Fntastic (@FntasticHQ) February 8, 2023

Trademark holder responds.

Following Fntastic’s tweet with “three facts” on the trademark dispute, the individual that filed the copyright ahead of Fntastic told Eurogamer on February 24 that they have no plans to give the name up and are “taking measures to protect trademark rights”.

TheDayBefore countdown calendar app, which is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store (where it has a 4.1/5 rating from 96,651 votes), was released in 2010. It has more than 40 million downloads and is used in many countries around the world according to the app developer.

“Since the trademark registration in Korea in 2015, we have held the right (registered in the name of The Day Before CEO Lee Sun-jae),” the app developer said. “Knowing that the game of the same name was produced, we are taking measures to protect our trademark rights.

“We currently hold trademark rights in Korea, the United States, China, Russia, Japan, Vietnam, and the European Union.”

The app developer also commented that it wants to “solve the trademark problem as soon as possible and continue to protect the app so that users can use it without worrying”. With Fntastic also saying it is very confident it can resolve the trademark issue, however, it’s unclear which way the dispute will fall.

Fntastic didn’t respond to Eurogamer at the time and has yet to comment on the app developer’s statement.

What’s next for The Day Before?

Fntastic certainly has a lot on its plate between the trademark dispute, a disgruntled fanbase, the copycat accusations, and simply finishing The Day Before. Its development period has been full of ups and down so far, and with the app developer insistent on maintaining rights to The Day Before name, it will perhaps have even more to come.

That being said, Fntastic is confident that it will be proved right when The Day Before launches. “We only believe in the final product,” it told IGN in January. “No matter what anyone says, you’ll see for yourself on November 10 this year. We hope that after the game’s success, we’ll give people faith that in this life, if you persevere toward a dream, it will come true, despite all the obstacles and doubts.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Square Enix has conceded that sales of its action role-playing game Forespoken fell below its expectations following the title’s January 23 release on PlayStation 5 and PC earlier this year.

“Reviews of Forspoken, which we released on January 24, 2023, have been challenging,” said Square Enix’s president and representative director Yosuke Matsuda in a February financial results briefing detailing the fortunes of the past year.

“However, the game has also received positive feedback on its action features, including its parkour and combat capabilities, so it has yielded results that will lead to improvement of our development capabilities of other games in the future.”

Despite this positive note, Matsuda admitted that sales of the game had been “lacklustre”, and that there was “considerable downside risk to our FY2023/3 earnings”. The concession follows an announcement from earlier this month that Forspoken developer Luminous Productions – founded in 2018 – would be folded back into Square Enix effective on May 1.

“Luminous Productions Co. Ltd. is meanwhile equipped not only with AAA title development capabilities but also technical expertise in areas such as game engine development,” said Square Enix following the announcement. “Combining the two entities will further enhance the Group’s ability to develop HD games.”

Prior to being reabsorbed, the developer announced that it would use its remaining time working on a patch to improve the game’s overall performance, and developing the DLC In Tanta We Trust, which is “on track for release this summer”.

Summarising our 6/10 review, IGN said that “Forspoken’s flashy combat and parkour can be fun, but they aren’t enough to make its cliche story and barebones open world very interesting to explore”.

Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer

Cardy, Dale, and Jesse are here to talk all things chainsaws and dinosaurs following new looks at Resident Evil 4 and Exoprimal. Excitement for The Super Mario Bros movie continues to grow as well as Cardy’s long-delayed appreciation for Death Stranding. It’s all building up to the building of three Frankenstein monster creations of horror movies, though, as some truly unwatchable films are pitched.

Got a game for us to play, or just want to tell us the weirdest thing you’ve eaten for breakfast? Drop us an email: ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.

IGN UK Podcast 687: The Build-a-Horror Movie-Workshop

• IGN UK Podcast 686: Sons of the Final Fantasy
• IGN UK Podcast 685: You Kang Make Me Whole Again
• IGN UK Podcast 684: Horizon Call of the Weetabix
• IGN UK Podcast 683: Magical Castles and Talking Cats
• IGN UK Podcast 682: Creating the Next Best Video Game TV Show

This week’s reveal trailer for Mutant Mayhem has us extremely stoked for the next generation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the big screen, but more than anything, it just makes me want a new TMNT game. As much as we loved last summer’s throwback beat-em-up Shredder’s Revenge, this is one pop-culture franchise that desperately needs the triple-A game treatment. And no, adding Shredder to Call of Duty doesn’t count (nor does it make much sense to bring a guy made out of knives to a gunfight.) But you know what really stings? We just got an incredible AAA open-world co-op action game that captured all the fun of TMNT… it just happened to be centered around Batman characters: Gotham knights.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: four masked vigilantes take to the streets and wage war on crime using martial arts skills and gadgets. You’ve got the leader in blue, the tech expert in purple, the surly short-tempered heavy-hitter in red, and of course the youngest member of the team who offers some comic relief. They operate out of a cool hideout in the middle of the city where they train, park their extremely toyetic vehicles, play video games to unwind and receive guidance and/or scoldings from an elderly mentor who drinks a lot of tea. They fight a variety of animal-themed villains, but their biggest threat is a gang of ruthless assassins who operate from the shadows, and which has a high-ranking member whose namesake is something that can cut you.

All the above is true of both Gotham Knights and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Part of the reason I can’t unsee this is that the last big, triple-A non-LEGO, non-cartoony DC game was Injustice 2. In addition to a roster full of characters who appear in Gotham Knights, the Turtles also showed up as DLC. We’ve seen Raph and Leo taking on Harley and Mr. Freeze already, now let me take them bounding across skyscraper rooftops looking for gangs of street punks to beat up.

There are a variety of reasons why Gotham Knights is NOT a TMNT game, no matter how much I might want it to be. First and foremost, WB has full ownership of DC characters, while TMNT is a Nickelodeon property, and Nick is a subsidiary of Paramount Global, which is one of WB’s competitors. WB Discovery CEO David Zaslav has a historic dislike of talking animals that solve mysteries, so that could be a factor too. (Okay, not really, but he did shelve Scoob!: Holiday Haunt and I’m still sore about it.)

Also, WB Interactive has cracked the code to making solid Batman games. The sky-high expectations set by the Arkham series may have ultimately worked against Gotham Knights’ reception, but it’s also what paved the way for it in the first place. Either way, Ninja Turtles hasn’t had the same luck as Batman in the triple-A space, so the higher-ups at Paramount might not think pumping millions of dollars into game development is exactly, uh, paramount.

That said, between the massive success of Shredder’s Revenge and the possibility of Mutant Mayhem exerting some Turtle Power over the box office, maybe it’s just a matter of time before a big huge modern TMNT game comes out of the shadows.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll have to use my imagination. I can pretend that Professor Pyg is Bebop and Man Bat is Wingnut and Clayface is Muckman. And hey, maybe if I’m lucky, somebody will whip up some PC mods that mutate Gotham Knights into a TMNT game. After all, if someone made a mod where you can play through Spider-Man as IGN’s gotham knights review score, anything’s possible. Cowabunga!

Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 2: MEGA, arrives today, bringing with it a host of map changes, new vehicles and traversal mechanics, an Eren Jaeger skin, and a whole lot more.

One of the biggest map changes is the introduction of the neon-lit urban playground of MEGA city. Beyond this seemingly cyberpunk-inspired cityscape, a range of new biomes have also been added, including Steamy Springs, Drift Ridge, Kenjutsu Crossing, and more besides.

Chapter 4 Season 2 also brings new traversal mechanics to the game. Players will be able to zip around MEGA city with the help of the omni-directional mobility gear (ODM) ripped straight from the anime Attack on Titan, which is not so coincidentally ramping up to an epic endgame that has been 10 years in the making.

Incoming… #FortniteMEGA pic.twitter.com/n8QBNv2Pcg

— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) March 10, 2023

Beyond that, players will be able to jump on grind rails to get around quickly, or make use of the two-person Rogue bike or the Nitro Drifter four-seater sports car.

Season 2 also comes with a fresh Battle Pass, the purchase of which will immediately unlock an outfit for the “fine-tailored Renzo the Destroyer”, while the “streetwear savant” Thunder, and “The elegantly casual Highwire” will also be available with a Battle Pass purchase. Later on, players will also be able to gain access to the Eren Jaeger skin.

New Reality Augments are also being added in Chapter 4 Season 2, seven of which will be available immediately, including the Munitions Slide, Shotgun Recycle, and the Dignified Finish.

Check out the official Fortnite blog for a full list of the updates coming to Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 2.

A few weeks ago, Devin Reimer was doing a bunch of game testing at VR developer Owlchemy Labs, when one of the developers asked him, in VR, if he would like a donut. He said he did. But instead of reaching out and taking it with his hand, the developer passed Reimer the donut and put it in his mouth. His character ate it.

It’s a simple gesture, one that any of us could do in the real world any time there are donuts around. But in VR, this sort of combination of simplicity and playfulness has been the successful brand of Owlchemy Labs for over 12 years. And it’s a legacy Reimer is deeply proud of as he steps down from the post of “CEOwl” to move into philanthropic work using climate tech to fight the ongoing global climate crisis, leaving his colleague Andrew Eiche as the new “CEOwl” in his stead.

Speaking to me at DICE, the two are ecstatic about the leaps and bounds Owlchemy and VR as a whole have been able to make over the years. Hand tracking technology, for instance, is progressing well, and is a major staple of Owlchemy’s plans for multiplayer play in its upcoming new, untitled VR game. Specifically, they tell me, they want to work on multiplayer play that’s collaborative, not competitive, because they believe it just works that much better in the VR space specifically.

“VR multiplayer in the current state, which is totally great and fine, is a lot like, I lay on my floor and shoot you with a big sniper rifle, or I’m flying around an arena throwing the ball,” Eiche explains. “But people haven’t conceptualized: we’re playing a duet on the piano, the equivalent to that, or we’re writing together on a whiteboard or we’re sculpting together. And we are experimenting with those things.”

Affording Chaos

But with experimentation comes a whole host of technical challenges. The physical space has to be believable not just with one person running around in it and interacting with objects, but multiple. Eiche calls it a “technical nightmare, but worth solving.”

“The things that make console games great are not the things that make VR games great,” he continues. “VR games just tend to work best when you get sand boxing and you get explorative as a core feature and not explorative in the ‘going through a Zelda world’ exploration. But explorative as in, I’m messing with the environment.”

Which is where hand tracking comes in. Eiche tells me that hand tracking is great technology for exploring interactions with worlds that controllers can’t accomplish. A controller can give you a button to pick up an object, and maybe do a single interaction with it, then get rid of it. But what a controller can’t do is what Eiche calls “affordances,” or secondary interactions. Extra stuff that a person might want to do with an object in a world that might be extraneous or even silly. Like clicking a pen.

“Spraying a spray bottle, squeezing a sponge, those are all things that controllers don’t do well because they’re so binary in their state,” he says. “Even with analog controls, it never feels right. But you can do a soft pickup with hand tracking and then squeeze. Eggs were the best. Because you pick up an egg. And then you’re like, ‘Ah, an egg.’ And you squeeze as hard as you can and it crushes and you’re like, ‘Yeah, I did that.’

“We used to say the water bottle on the table is the worst. If you have a water bottle on the table and you reach through it, that disappoints people. So then you pick it up and the next thing is, I should be able to uncap it and then I should be able to drink it. I should be able to pour it. I should be able to…affordances is what we talk about a lot.”

The pair tells me when they playtest, the only time they speak to the playtester is during those moments when the tester tries to do something with an object, nothing happens, and they momentarily look dismayed. Eiche will then ask them what they expected to happen in that moment, and write it down. Often, these are affordances they decide to add later.

But affordances also seem like an infinite rabbit hole of adding features, which seems like it could lead to scope creep quite easily. Eiche says that the team is quite adventuring internally, often supporting developers who preface sentences with “Okay, this is a really bad idea, but…” in whatever harebrained ideas they want to try out. But Eiche also keeps a pretty strict philosophy on cutting content.

“Once you’ve conceptualized the cut, so once you’ve thought about it and you’re like, ‘I think that if we had to cut this we could,’ it’s now your moral obligation to do that cut. Because once you’ve conceptualized it, you’ve already solved the hardest problem. So your game will be better if you just see that through…So developers are a little bit more gun shy to come up to me and be like, ‘I’ve thought of this cut.’ Because I’ll immediately be like, ‘Yes, do it now. Go cut.’ But I’ve never encountered a situation where somebody hasn’t walked through the steps and the game has not been better on the other side…We throw 90% of stuff away. And it’s just, that’s the nature of it.”

Hand tracking isn’t the only other VR tech that Eiche and Reimer are excited about. Face tracking is another big one, because of the level of emotional depth they hope it will allow players to express in virtual spaces, especially cooperatively. And Reimer was thrilled that Sony committed to putting a rumble in the head of its PSVR2 headset, in no small part due to a very specific interaction in Job Simulator.

“In the kitchen there’s a blender and if you turn on the blender and then you stick your face in it down to the blades, there’s haptics in the headsets and the headsets like this,” he holds his hands up to his head and vibrates for a moment. “And it cracks me up so much.”

Eiche adds: “Sony was the only group crazy enough to do it because every time we’d ask another headset manufacturer, they’re like, ‘Are you kidding me? We have trouble enough getting it on the head. Right? We’re not going to shake their face.’”

The Wrong MetaVRse

One technological concept that they’re a little less high on is the metaverse. Reimer likes the word, but says it’s been ruined.

“A lot of people think of the Metaverse as a space where we dump 10,000 people into the same location and they’re doing stuff together,” he says. “And I don’t think that’s going to work.”

Eiche chimes in: “Once a year we go to GDC I’m like, ‘Wow, this is what 10,000 people looks like. And then we’re like, I got to get the fuck out of here.”

Reimer notes that even in a space like a big conference, you don’t hang out with all 10,000 people. You find small groups of friends and spend time with them. That’s closer to what he thinks a “metaverse” might end up being successful at.

“I think they’re always solving the wrong problem,” Eiche continues. “You’re solving the tech problem. And it’s a content problem. And I read a tweet that I just love, which is, ‘It’s easier to create a pen and paper than it is to write Ulysses.’ And over and over again, each metaverse creates a pen and paper…So every time somebody talks about it and they’re like, ‘We’ll have so many users generate this content.’ It’s like you’re making the pen and paper again and hoping that some genius writer shows up and creates the world that you wanted in there. And I mean, Roblox existed for, what, 15 years before it became popular? Anyone thinking about embarking in the Metaverse should look at that and go, holy shit, we have a content problem, not a tech problem.”

Eiche does believe that VR is a likely component of a metaverse idea, and in fact is already a part of it, because it’s already part of an online society. But he doesn’t want VR to be “put in a box.”

“VR can do a lot more than just this thing that you’re trying to shove it into because you read a lot of Neil Stephenson and you think it’s super cool. And it is super cool…But those worlds were also dystopias, right? Ready Player One, they lived in stacks of trailers and everybody went to the Oasis to hide from reality. And then you see people get on stage, they go, we’re building the oasis. And it’s like, are you building both sides of it? Because I don’t like that.”

As Reimer departs, he’s happy with what he’s built and the space he’s helped carve out for Owlchemy in the VR market, especially given that they started at a time when many questioned if VR was about to die for good. Now, there’s no question VR is here to stay, and it’s on Eiche to think about Owlchemy’s place in defining its future. He wants to get the VR industry to move toward the vision Owlchemy has of VR spaces as instinctive, inventive playgrounds that aren’t dependent on current ideas of what a video game should be.

Eiche explains that when games are dependent on controllers, they tend to gravitate toward specific kinds of verbs in their gameplay: shoot, throw, things that are easily mapped to buttons. But with VR, you can bypass all that and conceivably remove most limitations from what a person could do in a virtual space. Why, then, would the VR industry need to keep making video games like the console industry? Why spend investment money on trying to translate another AAA shooter into VR when there are so many other possibilities?

“I think it would be a failure of VR if Job Simulator is still [one of the top VR games] in five years,” Eiche says. “It’s like Wii Sports, right? You need to get past that. We need the industry to move on. Financially we’d love it if we’re in the top 10 forever. But is that healthy for the industry?”

Reimer adds: “Any individual studio, including Owlchemy, is only successful if other studios are also making awesome stuff.”

Rebekah Valentine is a reporter at IGN.

With the highly anticipated remake for Resident Evil 4 releasing in a few weeks, Capcom has shed a new trailer for the upcoming title, including when the demo will be available.

Announced today during the Capcom Spotlight event, the “Chainsaw Demo” is available starting today and will allow players to play an early portion of the game where Leon enters the village. The demo will have no time limit and is available on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, and Steam.

Ahead of the event, the developer released a new teaser website for Resident Evil 4 Remake, which contains riddles, puzzles, and a ton of backstory for the game.

Resident Evil 4 Remake will launch on March 24 for PC, PS5, PS4, and Xbox Series X/S. A free VR mode for PS VR2 is also in development. For more information, including changes coming to Resident Evil 4 Remake, check out our full interview with director Yasuhiro Ampo and Capcom producer Yoshiaki Harabayashi and our separate breakout, where the developers explain the hurdles they faced while trying to recreate the iconic chainsaw controller.

Resident Evil 4 Remake’s Chainsaw Demo was one of a handful of announcements unveiled at Capcom’s Spotlight event. Check out our everything announced post for a roundup of all the latest news from Capcom’s upcoming projects.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

The creator behind the Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse says that its development was actually haunted. Director Makoto Shibata said that while he doesn’t believe in zombies or monsters, the game was inspired by spirits he’s encountered.

In a blog post by Xbox Wire, Shibata explained that in the Japanese game industry, developers visit a shrine and perform a purification ceremony when working on a horror title, so that way no strange phenomena would occur during the game’s development. However, the development team behind Fatal Frame did not do so in order to get spirits to come out.

“Like the time we were recording sound and a mysterious voice was actually recorded in the background,” Shibata said. “We tried to remove it from the recording, but eventually gave up because no matter what we did, the voice kept coming back onto the recording, so we actually left it in the game!”

A haunted development

Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse was inspired by an experience Shibata had in an old hot spring hotel. He woke up in the middle of the night and saw a man he didn’t recognize standing on the other side of the hallway. As Shibata tried to approach the man, he ran off. Shibata then wondered if the man was some sort of spirit or vision, and wanted to recapture the atmosphere of the hotel in Mask of the Lunar Eclipse.

During the development of the original game for Wii, Shibata said he saw a spirit of a girl who would circle around a ping-pong table. He claimed that the girl was singing numbers in the form of verses, and thought this was a message to include in the game. As a result, Shibata included an event where a girl sings numbers.

He also explained that the spirit named Kageri Sendo in Mask of the Lunar Eclipse was inspired by “Miyamoto-san,” a figure in a wheelchair that sometimes appeared in his dreams. In the game, Sendo is a female spirit inspired by gothic horror.

“It’s funny, though, as Miyamoto-san has not appeared in my dreams since he appeared in the game,” Shibata said. “Having gained form, maybe he was satisfied to some extent?”

Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse was first launched for the Wii in 2008 in Japan. It is now available worldwide for PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.

When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey

So far we haven’t seen any discount on the PlayStation 5 console from an authorized reseller. That means any discount is worth mentioning, even if it requires a little bit extra legwork. Today, Newegg is offering 10% off the PS5 Disc Edition God of War: Ragnarok console bundle, or $503.99, after applying code: ZIPPIDY10 and checking out with Zip.

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In 2008, a handful of frustrated developers at a tiny, Quebec-based Ubisoft subsidiary (of sorts) called Longtail Studios led a valiant, if doomed, unionization attempt that was well ahead of its time.

In recent years, unionization in the games industry has become a hot topic. Multiple games companies have unionized, either in part or as a whole, and the overall attitude toward unions industry-wide (as measured by the annual Game Developers Conference survey, at least), has slowly become more positive. This wave of interest in unions comes as a possible solution to growing concern about games industry working conditions, amid reports that multiple major AAA companies foster toxic work environments, crunch lasting weeks or even months, and hostile conditions for women and minorities. And while some major companies like Activision-Blizzard have been openly hostile toward such efforts, others, such as Microsoft, have been surprisingly permissive.

But it wasn’t always this way. IGN spoke to seven sources familiar with the story of Longtail Studios, six of whom were involved in some way with a unionization drive at the studio in 2008-2009. Despite their movement’s ultimate failure at the time, those we spoke to feel that Longtail’s story is worth telling, both as a clear example of why worker protections might be desirable in the games industry to begin with, as well as a testament to how far unionization in the space has come in a short amount of time.

Ubisoft declined to comment on this story.

Ubisoft, But Not Quite

Longtail Studios was founded in 2003 by Ubisoft co-founder Gérard Guillemot. It was initially based in New York City, but soon after spun up two satellite studios: one in Quebec, and later, another one in Prince Edward Island, which eventually moved to Halifax. For the first five years of its existence, Longtail was a tiny studio of less than 100 employees focused on early mobile and DS games such as Sprung, Heartbreakers, My Bridezilla, Hollywood Hustle, and TNA Wrestling. Later, it expanded into console games, beginning with Grey’s Anatomy: The Video Game in 2009 for the Nintendo Wii, and later still moving into Wii U development with ESPN Sports Connection and Rocksmith 2014.

Though not officially affiliated with Ubisoft, Guillemot’s Ubisoft funding and familial ties to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot kept it close at hand to the much larger French studio. In many ways, Longtail was like a second Gameloft: founded by a Guillemot brother, largely funded and run by Ubisoft’s friends and business partners, and focused on the mobile market that Ubisoft proper had not yet gained a strong foothold in. Ubisoft officially published a number of Longtail-developed games, but the day-to-day ties went much further than that. Longtail’s Quebec production studio shared a building with Ubisoft Quebec, and sources tell me Ubisoft leads would often come and go from the Longtail office. The two companies even shared a Christmas party at least once. One source who worked there at the time described it as “Ubisoft with a different name.” Multiple sources recalled early pay stubs stemming from Ubisoft, not Longtail, before it eventually switched, and one source shared their original job offer letter with IGN, signed off on by “Estelle Jacquemard, Ubisoft Entertainment Inc. Quebec, Projet Longtail.”

“Between us, we would describe [the relationship between Ubisoft and Longtail] as ‘incestuous,’” one source recalls. “We were often reminded by management that Longtail and Ubisoft were two different companies. They would get angry if we referred to Longtail as Ubisoft and we were forbidden from saying we worked for Ubisoft. But, we were paid through Ubisoft in the beginning (I don’t remember when it stopped), we worked in the same building (different floors), shared some equipment, and the owner was one of the Guillemot brothers (Gérard). We also developed some games for them (Grey’s Anatomy and a few titles in the Imagine series).”

Sources who worked at Longtail during these early years recall an often-frustrating work environment. Decisions, they say, were largely made by creatives at Longtail’s New York office, who then expected Longtail Quebec – where most of the programmers, artists, and designers were based – to execute. They described little to no opportunity for upward mobility within the company, and very little training or guidance from more senior individuals – something that proved stressful for a studio largely composed of young, inexperienced developers just getting their start in the industry.

Many of the workers, multiple sources told me, weren’t trained to make the kinds of things New York was asking for, and these large, challenging, or even impossible asks often came on tight turnarounds, resulting in crunch and delays. Two sources recalled that as time went on, this relationship resulted in Longtail becoming fraught with infighting, with one programmer describing the environment as follows:

“Game designers were told that programmers were lazy and incompetent, so they shouldn’t listen to us when we said that what they asked was costly, time consuming, or sometimes even impossible on the hardware we were targeting,” they recall. “They were expected to push for what they wanted (or what their boss wanted) using every argument they could to make it happen, including twisting our own technical arguments around and questioning our competence. When the result was (predictably) a barely playable mess, we would get blamed for it.”

Others in different departments, such as QA, said their workload was more variable, with periods of crunch closer to deadlines interspersed with long stretches of little to no work. One recalled groups of QA testers playing Warcraft, StarCraft, and Unreal Tournament in the office, saying, “This was the weirdest job I ever had.”

Since the ‘90s, Quebec has offered significant tax credits for multimedia businesses set up in the province. It’s a financial plan that Ubisoft had a major hand in forcing through, and has been a significant factor in Quebec becoming a major game development center globally. It’s been a historically controversial program in the province, and at Longtail it sparked a lot of speculation. Among those involved in Longtail’s unionization, there was a widespread suspicion that Ubisoft had largely set up Longtail to take advantage of these government grants and tax credits rather than because it needed a new studio to make games, all while failing to invest that money back in the studio. Multiple former employees recalled signing papers for a government organization called Emploi Québec – which offers grants to companies in exchange for providing specialized training to workers. The paperwork, they remembered, was effectively a statement that the workers had received training on the job to improve their skills, but none of those we spoke to recalled receiving any such training.

Across the board, pay at Longtail Studios was rather dismal. While everyone I spoke to agreed that programmers were paid roughly an acceptable living wage for Quebec at the time (one programmer told me they were paid about $40,000 CAD), all other roles were drastically underpaid, and raises were hard to come by – especially for QA, who made close to minimum wage (in 2008, roughly $17,680 CAD a year). One person told me their first role after leaving the games industry doubled their pay, with no expectation of overtime. Another reported being promoted out of QA into a designer role and not getting a raise, and thereafter receiving annual raises much lower than the rest of the designers even when their performance evaluation was positive. And another source recalled being offered $30,000 CAD a year to move to Quebec from another city, only to find when they had arrived that their offer had mysteriously dropped to only $19,000 CAD a year. Since they had already moved, they had no way of fighting the change. That said, several agreed that the health benefits at Longtail were quite good.

Whatever was going on behind the scenes, there was a pervasive belief among my sources that Ubisoft had founded Longtail not because they were interested in making good games or building a sustainable studio, but first and foremost as a way to receive additional funding from the Quebec government and ultimately funnel money back to Ubisoft. They felt strongly that the relationship between Longtail and Ubisoft was questionable at best, and that the studio conditions were neither healthy nor sustainable – especially when compared to the wider games industry.

A Longtail Union

With poor working conditions, insufficient pay, a stressful environment, little transparency, and seemingly no change in sight, a handful of Longtail employees sought other solutions. In 2008, a pair of individuals began reaching out individually to their coworkers in an effort to convince them to start a union under Quebec’s Alliance de la Fonction Publique du Canada (AFPC). One of them, Mathieu Lemire, was initially hired as a young, green QA tester and was later invited to join the game design team. The other, Boris Perron, was a programmer, and one of the older and more experienced employees at Longtail. The two quickly became the leaders of the movement within Longtail, and became known around the studio for being vocal about working conditions and issues at the company. IGN spoke to them both, and both agreed to be named in this piece.

“I knew I would have to fight in order to get any respect and fair work conditions,” Lemire says. “Unionization was the only way I could successfully gain something, for me and for others who were like me. In order to fight in equal terms against a company far stronger than any individual, you have to organize and do this together. With a union, you can negotiate and even organize a strike without being completely obliterated. If you try anything by yourself, any company exploiting you can just say, ‘No,’ and ‘You’re fired.’ I knew I could not do this by myself, so I seized the opportunity.”

Lemire and Perron connected with then AFPC-representative Jean-julien Mercier, who also spoke to IGN and agreed to be named in this story. The three split the task between them, with Perron focusing on the programmers, and Lemire trying to bring in the designers, artists, and QA. Mercier, hoping to avoid rousing suspicion that either was involved, visited a number of Longtail employees at home to get them to sign union cards. The group made good progress for a while, seeing a lot of interest from the programmers and artists especially, but Lemire describes the response from QA and game design as “anemic.”

“They were scared like crazy and nobody wanted to sign a card,” he says. “In 2008, technology businesses were vastly hostile to unionization. In the video game business, it was even worse than that. Everybody was afraid of losing their job.”

As the two continued their efforts to speak to their colleagues one by one, problems began to arise. Lemire expressed that he grew frustrated with Mercier, who he didn’t perceive as providing clear guidance or direction. Mercier, however, tells me that at the time he was still very new to the job, with a young child at home, and was doing the best he could. And at some point amid this struggle, Longtail management got wind of what was going on. Lemire and Mercier both suspect that a specific individual they approached to sign a card ultimately outed them to management — a suspicion that would later be confirmed at least in part at Lemire’s trial in 2010 when one of the leads from Longtail New York testified he was tipped off to the union attempt by an employee.

Lemire and Perron’s involvement would only be further confirmed to Longtail management when, in late 2008, they appeared on a public television program in Quebec discussing unionization in the games industry (above). Lemire recalls that those in charge of the program listed on their website that he worked for Ubisoft, despite him asking them not to include that information, but the damage was done. Someone at either Ubisoft or Longtail noticed, and Lemire recalls being called into the director’s office and being scolded severely – initially for inaccurately claiming he worked at Ubisoft, and then as the conversation went on, for discussing industry working conditions without their consent.

Perron was a bit luckier, as roughly around the time the segment aired, he found a job elsewhere and left Longtail, leaving Lemire to spearhead the movement alone. But not long after, the worst happened: Lemire was fired.

Longtail, Folded

Officially, Lemire was fired for poor work performance, but its occurrence so soon after the television appearance and Longtail catching wind of his efforts was regarded as suspicious by everyone I spoke to. Initially, Lemire accepted his defeat quietly, but what happened the following month spurred him into further action.

All throughout 2008, Longtail Studios had been restless – new projects had dried up, and employees were worried about the studio potentially closing. One lead I spoke to recalls being told after Lemire was fired that his dismissal was an isolated event and all other jobs were safe. But in December of 2008, roughly a month after Lemire was fired, Longtail underwent layoffs. From its peak of roughly 80-100 employees, Longtail eliminated 38 positions, approximately half of its then-current staff, including a large number of those who had been involved in the union efforts, and almost its entire art team.

At the time, Longtail claimed it was due to the economic crisis and a lack of game sales. Employees who were there recall the announcement being short, with no chance to ask questions, and a list of names hung up on the wall to indicate to employees who had lost their jobs. One lead told me they were given no input on who was let go, and were only told five minutes beforehand that the layoffs were happening. Those who were being laid off were given eight weeks, per Quebec laws on collective dismissals, and stayed with the studio wrapping up one last project through the start of February. Then they were gone.

“The Christmas party that year was…something,” recalls one employee who survived the layoffs. “The layoffs were announced in December and the people that were losing their jobs were still invited. It wasn’t an open bar, but there were plenty of booze tickets and they had rented those carnival games where you punch a target and it measures your strength. People got extremely drunk and at least one guy broke his hand.”

The following April, Ubisoft posted a 14% year-over-year sales increase for the prior year, with CEO Yves Guillemot saying the company had “the second best profitability among comparable companies in its industry.” Its casual games business grew 40%, with the company hiring roughly 1,300 new employees in the interest of “preparing for the next generation of handheld as well as home consoles.”

Mercier notes that prior to the layoffs, over 35% of the eligible studio members had signed union cards, which in Quebec is enough to force a full studio vote. He says they had been delaying in hopes of getting over 50% to sign, which would automatically grant Longtail a union without a vote. But not only had Longtail lost its two union leaders, the layoffs had mysteriously impacted every other strong supporter of the union effort as well.

“They cut our head off,” Mercier recalls. “We didn’t have any strong supporters anymore. I was left with nearly starting again to zero, but the conditions never materialized to let the campaign run again…They wanted to make sure that the cancer couldn’t grow.”

Without Perron or Lemire, with their headcount decimated, and fear of retaliation higher than ever, this was the final nail in the coffin of Longtail’s union efforts. Longtail, such as it was, briefly soldiered on. The Quebec studio was formally folded into Ubisoft the following year (a move that also resulted in a few more employees being laid off), and development efforts within Longtail itself shifted primarily to its Halifax location…which was then also folded into Ubisoft in 2015. The ultimate absorption of Longtail happened just as its sister studio Gameloft was gobbled up by Vivendi amid Vivendi’s attempt at an Ubisoft takeover, and may have been a preventative measure to keep the same thing from happening in Halifax. It’s unclear what happened to the New York branch of Longtail Studios – presumably it was shuttered or similarly wrapped up into its informal parent company, as the last game released by Longtail Studios, Trivial Pursuit Live!, came out in 2015 and Longtail’s website ceased to function in late 2018.

A Last Ditch Effort

But even after their efforts failed, Lemire, Perron, and several others rallied one last time to hold Ubisoft and Longtail accountable for their treatment of employees. When Lemire learned about the layoffs in the wake of his firing, he was inspired to try and rekindle the unionization flame, if not at Longtail, then elsewhere in the industry. So he filed a claim against Longtail with the Quebec Commission des normes de travail, alleging he had been wrongfully terminated for unionization activity.

“If we could just raise awareness, maybe catch the attention of the government or some journalists, we could still get something from this fight and maybe even inspire other workers from the video game business to fight for their rights and dignity,” Lemire tells me. “At that point, I wasn’t even expecting to win. It would have been a bonus, but my objective was to raise the curtain on the abuse in the video game industry.”

But Lemire wasn’t the only one who took Longtail management to court. A group of laid off employees also banded together for multiple other cases in the same court, though theirs alleged wrongful termination rather than termination for unionization specifically. Multiple employees who were involved recalled receiving emails from a government program specifically designed to help those recently laid off find new positions, advertising their own exact jobs back to them. One source sent IGN a copy of a job posting they were sent by Emploi Quebec, which provides assistance to those impacted by collective dismissal. The job posting was the exact same job they had just been laid off from at Longtail.

But as before, Lemire and his colleagues’ push for accountability quickly unraveled. Mercier recalls asking AFPC if they would provide legal representation, but his request was denied. As a last ditch effort, he opted to represent Lemire himself, but admits to me that he had little experience and struggled to put together a case due to Lemire’s history of being outspoken in the workplace. Longtail claimed Lemire was incompetent and a poor employee – though multiple other employees I spoke to pointed out to me that Lemire’s conduct had seemingly been tolerable to Longtail until the union situation arose. The judge, admitting he was unable to assess whether or not Lemire had been competent at his job, gave Longtail the benefit of the doubt and ruled in its favor. Lemire’s case was crushed, but he hoped his trial would at least inspire the cause of his former coworkers.

His hopes were in vain. Lemire’s loss took the wind out of the others’ efforts, and Mercier told one of their group that because it was classified as a collective dismissal, he had no argument he could present the court in their favor. He filed initial paperwork on their behalf, but then declined to be involved further, a move that left many of those I spoke to feeling bitter and hurt. Lemire tells me he called Mercier after he left, telling Mercier he had betrayed him and the others, and that Lemire would never forgive him. The two haven’t spoken since.

“It’s painful to me,” Mercier recalls. “They were very good people, but unfortunately I was left with no option. We didn’t have any legal arguments. They played the anti-union playbook properly. It was seriously one of the worst moments of my career, and I do believe it’s still the worst moment of my career, having to look these people in the face and tell them that I could do nothing.”

With Lemire’s loss and Mercier gone, most of those involved in the case gave up, but one stuck it out all the way to trial. It was there that Longtail, fully funded and represented by large Quebec law firm Langlois Kronström Desjardins, claimed that the layoffs were a lawful collective dismissal. Per trial documents seen by IGN, Longtail argued that Canada was feeling the effects of the 2007 global financial crisis, and with game development moving more and more toward 3D worlds, its Longtail teams of mostly 2D developers and artists – which had made up the bulk of the layoffs, if not all – weren’t able to keep up. Mobile games, it said, weren’t profitable. It was pivoting back to console.

The remaining employee argued back, pointing out that many of the positions (such as UI artists) were relevant in 3D development and their skill sets were still useful. They claimed that they were terminated not due to the economy or their skills, but due to “corporate restructuring and business reorientation,” saying that their team in particular was targeted for “having a negative attitude.” They noted that because Longtail was rehiring for the same role, it hadn’t been necessary to terminate them. But Longtail denied these claims. The judge pointed out that Longtail hadn’t explicitly hired anyone to replace the employee in question, saying their suspicions were insufficient. Without a lawyer, a “preponderance of evidence,” or funding to press the matter, the second complaint was also lost.

Following their dismissal and the trials, multiple sources I spoke to said they struggled to find work in the games industry in Quebec. Several believed that word of their unionization attempt and subsequent court case had spread in the local industry, discouraging companies from hiring anyone involved. One person I spoke to who left of their own accord after the layoffs told me that when they told their manager they were leaving, the manager explicitly told them that if they wanted to, they could stop them from getting another job in the industry. All but one of the people I spoke to for this piece left the games industry for good in the years immediately following their departure from Longtail.

The Unionized Future

The story of Longtail Studios is a sad one, and not exactly encouraging at a time when unionization efforts across gaming are ramping up as workers push for better conditions industry-wide. But one hopeful note that struck me while writing this was that despite their struggles and ultimate loss, my sources still fundamentally believed that games industry unions were not just possible, but critical to a better future for the industry.

“Years later, I still think this was the correct thing to do,” one source said. “In fact, I could not do otherwise. Too many employees had poor conditions to be tolerated. Unionizing could also have been a way to expose all the corruption in our government and in Longtail/Ubisoft by forcing a more transparent budget. We should always fight against corruption and exploitation, no matter what the circumstances are. When facing unethical big businesses and shady government deals, unionizing is the only way to keep the forces in balance. It’s true that we suffered heavy losses when doing so, but there are lessons to learn from this. So yes, I would still encourage others to unionize for themselves and for others.”

One especially heartening note came from my original source. In their initial email to IGN, they told us they were inspired to mention their experience at Longtail because they had heard about Microsoft’s recent messaging around taking a “neutral approach” toward a possible Activision-Blizzard union (should the acquisition go through), and its later voluntary recognition of a ZeniMax QA testers union and ad in the Washington Post expressing the positive impact of unions. While there is never a guarantee Microsoft might not change its mind down the line, my source was astonished at how the narrative had changed in a decade and a half.

“In hindsight, I dunno…at the time [unionizing] just made sense. I was making around $30,000 CAD a year when the North American average was almost double,” they told me. “We knew that the salaries were paid in part by the government (public funds) and we just wanted to have good conditions and be paid fairly. Conditions weren’t bad, but it just made sense to protect what we had. It was frowned upon when you said, ‘No’ to overtime, those types of situations had to go away. I regret signing that card in a way.

“That’s why when Microsoft said that they were okay with their studios unionizing it’s HUGE news! That’s a giant company saying it’s okay. Big corporations, ahem, game companies don’t like it when they don’t make tons of profits. They don’t really care about employees. They care about profits. I love the people that work at Ubisoft, many are still friends. I absolutely despise dishonesty and exploitation. I lost my career. I’m still affected by it and I’m still crying everytime I talk about it. I’m mad crying.

“I don’t want anybody to go through this because they tried to unionize. They shouldn’t be scared of it. I want to encourage the whole industry to talk about it out in the open. Make it normal! Unions were created for a reason! Better conditions and a fair slice of the pie.”

Interviewee responses have been lightly edited for clarity.

Thank you to Erwan Lafleuriel and IGN France for providing translation on all French documentation for this piece, and thank you to Vincent Chevarie and Renaud Loiselle Dupuis at Au bas de l’échelle for their assistance in interpreting Quebec labor law.