They Weren't Paid, But Fired and „Lied to”. Ironbird Creations' Employee Drama and the Crisis at All in! Games

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On 23 May 2024, the management of Kraków-based All in! Games (publisher of Chernobylite or the first Ghostrunner) decided to lay off more than half of the employees of its sub-company, Ironbird Creations, previously working on the promising action adventure game titled Phantom Hellcat. The part of narrative and programming teams, as well as a large part of the graphic artists, have been fired.  According to the informants, 19 people have managed to keep their positions (a number already gradually decreasing in June 2024). The redundancies were not announced on IBC's social media.

On the same day, an anonymous employee of Ironbird Creations, directly related to these events, contacted me to outline the key context of the situation — the company hasn't paid its employees for half a year (since December 2023) while also having financial arrears of 2 to 5 payments per subordinate. It still have some financial obligations to the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS), debt collectors and unfulfilled promises to investors. The situation is also being closely monitored by the National Labour Inspectorate (PIP).

The situation is said to be a result of the company's „temporary” financial crisis. However, I've directly contacted other employees and former workers, as well as the CEO of All in! Games SA, Marcin Kawa, to ascertain the details of company and developers problems.

Official announcement by the board of All in! Games SA

All in! Games is a video game publisher in operation since 2018. Currently, there are subsidiaries within the company such as Taming Chaos and Ironbird Creations in charge of production. All in! Games has published titles such as Chernobylite, Paradise Lost and the first Ghostrunner. However, its collaboration with the creators of the latter, One More Level, ended in conflict and financial repercussions - this, incidentally, was not AiG's first problems.

I had the opportunity to speak by phone or in writing with several (former and current) employees of both Ironbird Creations and the other sub-company of All in! Games, Taming Chaos. Some of them, for fear of breaking the NDA, decided to redirect me to sources more eager to share the facts, or simply rejected further correspondence, to which they had every right.

The informants chose to remain anonymous, but expressed relief at finally being able to say what has been going on at the company over the past months, and hope for legal justice and an appropriate response from the industry. The reports (which you'll learn about in a minute), were confirmed by my interviewees.

Contact with the management was kept to a minimum in the form of email messages (the contents of which I'll cite later), in which it was regularly promised that the money would come a few days from now, next week, etc. Developers asked for more calls and updates, tried to reach the management, only to reach a dead end. Interestingly, Marcin Kawa, despite avoiding contact with the staff, called the CD-Action editorial team on the same day that we began to investigate the matter further.

The issue was so enormous that the employees had no money to live on. They took loans to pay their rents. The developers reporting the situation felt no support from the head of the studio, Leksa Gornovitz. I was told, that she dismissed them when they asked for information, claiming the board was not telling her everything.

She assured the ZUS contributions were being paid for people working on employment contracts, when, in fact, they were not, with the debt in ZUS increasing, according to the screenshots from the employees' Discord (you can see the below). She told the devs that they could leave if they wanted to, but no one would be fired after all, and the situation with payments would soon stabilize. One informant tells me: „Gornovitz warned us that reporting the company's current situation anywhere could harm colleagues, putting them in a precarious position”.

The other group of devs I had the opportunity to talk to, however, sees Leksa's character very differently. They stress that „Leksa gave as much information as she had, and what she had, she had to cough up”. They felt supported by her and saw that she was trying to act for their benefit. They believe that putting some of the responsibility for communication problems on her is due to inability of several developers to deal with the legitimate stress.

I contacted Leksa Gornovitz to get her perspective on the situations presented by the devs. It turns out that she was fired from Ironbird Creations by Marcin Kawa on 10 June 2024. And she was allegedly not paid in recent months (with the exception of April 2024 and June 2024, when she was paid arrears for December 2023 and January 2024). She highlights the communication problems between management and employees and points out that she had this „thankless role of mediating between one side and the other”, herself not receiving enough information from her bosses regarding, for example, Social Insurance or the timing of the payment.

She also conveyed to me that „,she hopes that she built a studio in a pleasant atmosphere where everyone could be heard”. She understands the grief of some of the employees, but points out that she did not lie to them, she cared about their wellbeing and simply did not know the facts. In turn, what she knew was to be tailored to the needs of the individual. As she states: „I had to tailor the way I communicated to 60 different people and several versions of who needed what to feel good.”

One informant points out that he received late transfers from the company even before December 2023. The arrears were regulated, but usually after some time. Over the past six months, the situation has deteriorated significantly, with employees being told that the payment depends on the decision of the shareholders, and that if behind-the-scenes informations leak into the public space, no one would invest in Ironbird — which complicates the matter of sending due payments.

The dismissed employees were banned from mailing lists and official Discord channels where daily work-related issues were being discussed. Employees knew full well that layoffs are possible. The bosses, seeing the team's attitude, didn't assign them to many tasks, so the actual work was as much as nothing. Some simply just stopped working, seeing that their efforts were not compensated in any way. So, they've been looking for another gamedev place for themselves for months now — on the one hand acting quietly, on the other ticking the „open to work" LinkedIn option. Motivating themselves to take group action against the company was difficult for the devs, given the aforementioned fear of contractual penalties.

Recently, however, they've begun to report violations to the PIP and debt collectors. Those dismissed are considering legal action and taking their cases to court. They treat this article as a platform to express their dissatisfaction and sense of injustice. In addition, this is the first time in a long time they're talking about the issue to the wider audience. Finally, they are not afraid and they want to take action. These people have spent months trying to come to terms with their situation, had nervous breakdowns and faced unimaginable stress. They mention, half-jokingly: „For six months of defaulting on employees' payments, the company continues to maintain a large office. An office with a slide."

In 2023, All in! Games reported a consolidated net loss of PLN 6.22 million attributable to shareholders of the parent company in 2023, compared to a loss of PLN 40.21 million a year earlier. December 2023 brought the first arrears to the current devs. The topic of overdue payments was avoided during the calls, and any communication on the matter took place through email correspondence between CEO Marcin Kawa and VP Maciej Łaś with the Ironbird Creations staff. The contents of the messages were provided to me anyway. The issue of December salaries was addressed on January 30, 2024.

Management apologized for „the lack of payment”, declaring that „they needed a week or so to fulfill their commitment”, and as a form of, presumably, compensation offered „to expedite the ESOP, or Employee Stock Ownership Plan”, and to implement it for all employees, not just lead managers. This, the email stated, was to allow the developers to become, to some extent, co-owners of Ironbird Creations S.A..

In February, the share capital was changed from 6 million to 7.6 million zlotys. At the same time, the authorized capital changed from 2.6 million to 1 million zlotys (according to the KRS — National Court Register — report). The board also tried to look for profit-making alternatives. It issued a letter of intent to Monolith Films, a renowned Polish film distributor, „expressing its intention to negotiate to establish terms of cooperation involving the production and distribution of a film based on the Phantom Hellcat game IP.”

Selected financial data of the consolidated report from the quarterly report 2024.

All in! Games' March of 2024 was marked by high hopes related to the Phantom Hellcat showing at GDC and meetings with shareholders to get their help, among other investment funds. On March 5, March 8 and March 15, it was assured that overdue transfers had begun — money in the company's account reportedly came from investors, who were said to „keep their promise" in the form of providing the rest of the funds owed to the company.

Another several tens of thousands of zlotys allegedly reached the pockets of employees, and the relations with shareholders were said to tight enough to suggest the company's financial situation was going to get better. Management also tried to build a good narrative, boasting of progress when it came to relations with foreign publishers and platform owners.

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