Studio pay controversy

Multiple current and former Gunzilla Games staff say the studio stopped paying them months ago, with public posts this week naming missed wages, ignored messages, and promises that never turned into transfers. One former animator said he had not been paid since October 2025, while another employee said the last salary they received was in September. (insider-gaming.com) (thisweekinvideogames.com) The names and dates are what made the story spread so fast. Former talent acquisition lead Anna Savina said on April 7, 2026 that she was owed “several months” of pay after three years at the company, and former senior animator Paul Creamer said he kept working through October, November, and December 2025 after being told the delays would be fixed. (thisweekinvideogames.com) (games.gg) Other staff filled in the same timeline from different departments. Senior quality assurance engineer Anton Palii said he went five months without payment, quality assurance engineer Oleksii Zhestianenko said he was laid off in August and still had not received final pay, and former staffer Illia Metelskyi said he quit after two months of delays and never got the money he was later promised. (games.gg) Gunzilla’s chief executive, Vlad Korolev, did respond, but his wording added fuel instead of putting the fire out. He said some payments “may be scheduled” around company cash flow and claimed full-time official employees had never seen delays longer than a week, while describing the criticism as a “narrative from haters.” (thegamer.com) (rockpapershotgun.com) That distinction between “full-time official employees” and everyone else is central to the dispute. At least one of the people alleging months of missing pay held a senior in-house recruiting title, and several others described themselves as long-serving staff rather than short-term freelancers brought in for a few weeks. (thisweekinvideogames.com) (games.gg) Gunzilla is not a tiny studio nobody has heard of. The company says it was founded in early 2020, runs studios in Frankfurt, Kyiv, and London, and built Off The Grid, a free-to-play shooter that is live across personal computer, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and Series S. (gunzillagames.com) (gameoffthegrid.com) (store.steampowered.com) It also spent the last two years presenting itself as a well-funded expansion story. Gunzilla announced a $30 million funding round in March 2024 tied to its GUNZ blockchain platform, then announced in March 2025 that it had acquired Game Informer and brought back the full editorial team under a new company. (gunzillagames.com 1) (gunzillagames.com 2) That is why the allegations landed so hard. A studio that could announce a magazine acquisition, ship updates for a live service game, and talk publicly about innovation is now being accused by former workers of not covering basic payroll, which is the one bill employees cannot float for a company. (gunzillagames.com) (rockpapershotgun.com)) There was already smoke before this week. Insider Gaming reported a second round of layoffs in three months in July 2025, and multiple new accounts now say the pay delays stretch back to at least the fall of 2025, which paints a picture of a studio that may have been cutting costs while still trying to look stable from the outside. (insider-gaming.com) (games.gg) The next pressure point is simple: proof. If more employees publish contracts, invoices, bank records, or legal filings, publishers, platform holders, and partners will have to decide whether they can keep promoting Off The Grid and doing business with Gunzilla while wage claims are unresolved. (thegamer.com) (gamesindustry.biz) For now, the story is not that a game studio had a bad week on social media. The story is that a company behind a live online shooter and the owner of a 33-year-old games publication is facing a growing public record of workers saying they did the job and never got the money. (gunzillagames.com) (insider-gaming.com)