As Halo Studios gets ready for the July 28th release of Halo: Campaign Evolved, a new video has now come out alleging that the company has been mismanaging the Halo franchise and that its leadership is mistreating its employees. According to known Halo leaker Rebs Gaming, allegations have emerged against studio head Pierre Hintze, who has seemingly been reported to HR for numerous violations.
“[Hintze] mistreats employees, his decisions are destroying the Halo franchise, and everyone I’ve spoken to says he is not a qualified leader,” says the video. “He constantly berates the development teams. So much so that they don’t even want to share their work for fear of him blowing up at them. A memo was delivered from the engineering team regarding work-life balance, and Pierre responded, ‘I don’t give a f***.’ And he often downplays employees’ questions about becoming full-time or getting better opportunities.”
The video goes on to show a message sent by “someone who recently left Halo Studios and worked closely with leadership.” This message alleges that Hintze had verbally blasted the employee, and they express disbelief at the fact that Microsoft’s HR and legal teams “did not give me the time of day. Pierre literally told me to get the f*** out of the studio. It traumatized me.”
Former Halo Studios head of production and Halo: Campaign Evolved’s executive producer, Michael Fahrny, has also noted that Hintze displayed quite a bit of cruelty towards him during the upcoming title’s development, leading to the former getting demoted before taking medical leave. He was ultimately let go during the same.
“Pierre verbally abused the entire Campaign Evolved team because they were very far behind on the project. Campaign Evolved was in rough shape due to Pierre’s severe mismanagement, but he blamed the developers. It was poorly planned and managed because of him. He did nothing to work on a roadmap, did not plan things out correctly, and constantly changed priorities for the development team,” alleges the video.
Hintze doesn’t seem to be the only problem suffered by Halo Studios. The report also calls out other leaders – studio art director Chris Matthews, COO Elizabeth Van Wyck, and Xbox Game Studios executive Craig Duncan.
Matthews is accused of hiring his friends over more qualified candidates and making inappropriate comments to co-workers to the point that HR had to intervene. Van Wyck has been criticized for not focusing on her responsibilities to the studio and instead focusing on personal activities like vacations. Duncan (who has since departed from Xbox) has been called out for supporting Hintze’s promotion to studio head.
This is far from the first time that complaints and allegations have been leveled against the studio. Back in April, former art director Glenn Israel had accused the company’s leadership of “numerous unethical and/or unlawful acts” that involved, among other things, “blacklisting, rampant favoritism/cronyism, and multiple harassment campaigns designed to provoke the constructive discharge of ‘unwanted’ employees otherwise in good standing.”
