Ultima Creator, NCSoft Exec Returns to Gaming [Richard Garriott]

After a two-year break from gaming, and a short trip into space to visit the International Space Station, Ultima creator and former NCsoft executive Richard Garriott is back, this time as the technical director of a social media company. Austin-based Portalarium will focus on “developing and publishing online social games, virtual worlds and related services and products,” according to its website. The company’s first product is The Portalarium Player, a web brpwser plug-in that is supposed to help games run seamlessly inside a variety of major social networks. The first game to make use of this new player is Texas hold ‘em card game Sweet @$! Poker , which is in beta testing on Facebook. The plug-in is in development to run within MySpace and other social networks as well as the Mac, iPhone and Android. “The Portalarium mission is exactly what I want to be doing next in games,” Garriott said in a prepared statement. “This really takes me back to my roots in the game business – small development teams, low barriers to entry, affordable budgets for quality projects, and unlimited new interactive frontiers to explore together with our customers.” Other company execs at Portalarium include Dallas Snell (chairman and development director) and Fred Schmidt (CEO and publishing director), both of whom previously worked together with Garriott as executives at ORIGIN Systems, Electronic Arts and, most recently, NCsoft. Stephen Nichols, who spent his entire 17-year gaming career in online games, most recently as producer and lead programmer of NCsoft’s Dungeon Runners, will be the company’s vice president and technical director. I’ll be interested to see what this group does in a space that is becoming increasingly important to all types of gamers. It certainly isn’t the sort of gaming start-up I’d expect from the person behind Ultima Online and a slate of other massively multiplayer online games.

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Ultima Creator, NCSoft Exec Returns to Gaming [Richard Garriott]

BioWare Responds to Self-Censorship Charge on Mass Effect 2 Sex [Sex]

Mass Effect 2 ’s tamer (and sideboobless) sex scenes led some to believe that BioWare held something back, after the 2008 uproar over Mass Effect started by the Network That Must Not Be Named. But a dev sternly denies that charge. User Menelaos1971 opened a forum thread on the subject, calling the sex scene in Mass Effect 1 “a step in the right direction for Rated M games,” but implied that the uninformed uproar over it chilled BioWare’s intent to extend the theme in the sequel. He also alleged that BioWare was given orders from EA that an M for violence was OK, but not nudity, because it might affect sales. “Or was it just EA lawyers,” Menelaos1972 wrote. Stanley Woo, a member of the QA story team for the game, replied forcefully: It’s kinda funny that this topic keeps coming up over and over again. People who claim to be old enough and mature enough to handle sex and nudity in a game seem to believe that any lack of sex and nudity in the game is a sign of self-censorship. They generally don’t believe that a game can be called “mature” without explicit sex and/or nudity. Let me tell you, folks, that as a developer full of mature individuals, we are also free to not have explicit sex and/or nudity in our games, no matter what you, Fox News, the government, or Bunky the Wonder Clown has to say about it. We have never considered it a “problem,” it is simply a choice we have made and we have every right to make that choice. Later on, answering another forum poster who dragged parenting into the discuss, Woo continues: You are absolutely correct. It is not our job to parent the child or determine what content is acceptable or unacceptable for our players. But on the other hand, it is not your job to dictate what content we include or don’t include in our games. Game development is not a collaborative effort between developers and gamers; it is a dictatorship, where we alone determine what content goes into our game. You the player make the choice whether that content is acceptable to you (and/or your family) or not. I agree, but I think forum user Gorn Kregore put it a little more succinctly. “Two words: Get laid.” Sex and Nudity [BioWare Social Network, via Cinemablend . There are no spoilers in this thread]

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BioWare Responds to Self-Censorship Charge on Mass Effect 2 Sex [Sex]

Facebook Gets A Proper 3D Shooter [Facebook]

While most (but not all ) multiplayer games on Facebook at the moment are crude, simple affairs, one developer is looking to release a full-fledged 3D shooter onto the social networking platform. 3G Studios , which has worked on games like SWAT: Target Liberty on PSP and…the Jillian Michaels game on the Wii, is currently developing Brave Arms , a first-person shooter that looks like The Sims meets Brink. “Our new title, Brave Arms, will bring First-Person Shooter games to the masses,” James Kosta, boss of 3G Studios, told Worlds in Motion. “It’s about fast-paced action and either competing against or forming teams with your friends. We want people to feel empowered and to share in a real video game experience.” Those are some awful outfits, but then, this is a Facebook game. I’m more interested in how this will work, and be received by the millions of people happy playing spreadsheet-shufflers like Mafia Wars, than why that man is wearing a fisherman’s beanie. 3G Studios Releasing Social Shooter On Facebook [Worlds in Motion]

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Facebook Gets A Proper 3D Shooter [Facebook]

Rock Band iPhone Store Not Dead [IPhone]

Electronic Arts today released a free version of popular rhythm game Rock Band for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but the game’s Music Store remains outdated. Rock Band launched in October with 20 songs and a Music Store designed to allow gamers to purchase fresh tracks for their game. And for awhile the tracks dropped on a fairly regular basis. Two-packs of songs from 30 Seconds, Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters, The James Gang Rides Again, Social Distortion, Freezepop, Anarchy Club, Bang Camaro and Weezer hit the store for .99 cents a pop and some for free. But it’s been nearly a month since a new song has been added to the iPhone Rock Band store, leading some to wonder if the Apple version of the game was going the way of Rock Band Unplugged for the PSP. Last month, Harmonix said the weekly updates for the PSP music story were going on hiatus. Contacted this week, EA tells us that the Rock Band iPhone Music Store is still very much alive: “I can assure you that some new premium tracks will soon be available at a low price on the Music store,” the spokesperson said. Breath is officially bated.

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Rock Band iPhone Store Not Dead [IPhone]

Uncharted 2 Leads Nominees for AIAS Awards [Awards]

Uncharted 2’s 15 nominations lead all games up for honors at the Interactive Achievement Awards, given by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. Assassin’s Creed II and Batman: Arkham Asylum also are among the multiple nominees, announced Thursday. Assassin’s Creed II got 10 nominations; Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 nine; Batman: Arkham Asylum received 8; and four were given to both Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time and Brütal Legend. Three new awards were also created for this year’s presentation, the 13th annual. They are Portable Game of the Year, Outstanding Achievement in Game Design, and Social Networking Game of the Year. The awards will be given Feb. 18 in Las Vegas during the DICE Summit 2010. Comedian and actor Jay Mohr returns for his fifth year hosting the show. Following is a partial list of nominees. A full list may be found here [.pdf] Overall Game of the Year: Assassin’s Creed II Publisher: Ubisoft Developer: Ubisoft Montreal Batman: Arkham Asylum Publisher: Eidos/Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment Developer: Rocksteady Studios Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Publisher: Activision Developer: Infinity Ward Dragon Age: Origins Publisher: Electronic Arts Developer: BioWare Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America Developer: Naughty Dog Action Game of the Year: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Publisher: Activision Developer: Infinity Ward Left 4 Dead 2 Publisher and Developer: Valve Software Prototype Publisher: Activision Developer: Radical Entertainment Red Faction: Guerrilla Publisher: THQ Developer: Volition Shadow Complex Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios Developer: Chair Entertainment Casual Game of The Year: Drawn: The Painted Tower Publisher and Developer: Big Fish Games Flower Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America Developer: thatgamecompany Flight Control Publisher and Developer: Firemint Plants Vs. Zombies Publisher and Developer: PopCap Games Scribblenauts Publisher: Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment Developer: 5th Cell Media Role Playing/Massively Multiplayer Game of the Year: Borderlands Publisher: 2K Games Developer: Gearbox Software Champions Online Publisher: Atari Developer: Cryptic Studios Demon’s Souls Publisher: Atlus Developer: From Software Dragon Age: Origins Publisher: Electronic Arts Developer: Bioware Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Alphadream Social Networking Game of the Year: Bejeweled Blitz Publisher and Developer: PopCapGames Farmtown Publisher and Developer: Codebell FarmVille Publisher and Developer: Zynga Restaurant City Publisher: Electronic Arts/Playfish Developer: Playfish Outstanding Innovation in Gaming: Demon’s Soul’s Publisher: Atlus Developer: From Software Farmville Publisher and Developer: Zynga Flower Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America Developer: thatgamecompany Scribblenauts Publisher: Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment Developer: 5th Cell Media Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America Developer: Naughty Dog Adventure Game of The Year: Assassin’s Creed II Publisher: Ubisoft Developer: Ubisoft Montreal Batman: Arkham Asylum Publisher: Eidos/Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment Developer: Rocksteady Studios New Super Mario Bros. Wii Publisher and Developer: Nintendo Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America Developer: Insomniac Games Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America Developer: Naughty Dog

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Uncharted 2 Leads Nominees for AIAS Awards [Awards]

The Ten Most Influential Women In Games Of The Past Decade [Top Ten]

Gaming Angel’s founder Trina Schwimmer’s list of women in games includes ten people who have helped change the game industry from the inside. While it’s not all inclusive, it is a very sound list. This is the time of the year where most sites are doing their top ten lists about different subjects. Personally, I hate top ten lists. If I’m going to do one, then it’s going to be about something I’m passionate about. Therefore, we have two top ten list articles on GamingAngels.com. Here we are looking at the ten women that influenced the gaming industry in a big way over the last ten years. This isn’t an all-inclusive list and I’d love for you to join in the conversation by including your nominees in the comments. The game industry is starting to see change and some of it is due to the women on this list paving the path. Here in random order, are ten women that really changed the game industry over the last ten years. Lucy Bradshaw has to start the list with her work on the Sims beginning in the year 2000. Lucy and the Maxis team created a game that would be named the best selling PC game to date. The Sims is also credited for bringing more women into playing games. Lucy Bradshaw now leads the efforts of the Maxis team on the various Spore titles. She is an amazing speaker and is always pushing the industry forward. Kim Swift took the game industry by storm with the much praised hit, Portal. Swift was hired by Valve after graduation and won many awards with a title that appealed to casual and the hardcore. Swift has now joined Airtight Games to assist with games aimed at a more diverse audience. Jade Raymond was the producer on Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed. While she had been a producer on previous titles including The Sims Online, Jade definitely had to put up with controversy from men that couldn’t get over her looks. Yes guys, it is possible to be gorgeous and talented. Corrinne Yu is an amazing woman. She’s the principal programmer at Microsoft’s Halo team. I met her at a GDC Women in Games luncheon where she was rewarded for her work on the Halo series. She dresses like a rock star and talks about programming theory unlike anyone I know. Corrinne is an inspiration as we look at the problem of not enough women going into programming as a discipline. Megan Gaiser is the President and CEO of Her Interactive. Through her work at Her Interactive, she has helped make intelligent games for the younger female audience. Her Interactive games create the Nancy Drew series of games that are very popular. Megan works hard in both talks and through her work at Her Interactive to get more girls interested in gaming both as a hobby and as a career. Kellee Santiago is an amazing young woman from the Interactive Media program at USC. She is the president and co-founder of ThatGameCompany, a company that strives to create games that create an emotion in the player. Their first two games, flOw and Flower on the Playstation 3 are not only beautiful but also appeal to a more diverse audience. During our interview with her at the Spike VGAs, it was great to see her passionate and excited about the future of ThatGameCompany. We look forward to Kellee pushing the boundaries of what we think about games. Amy Hennig works as Naughty Dog as the Creative Director on Uncharted and Uncharted 2. Uncharted 2 is second in the top 20 ranked Playstation 3 games on Metacritic. Amy concentrates on story and actors and it shows. Uncharted 2 has some of the best voice acting of any game out there. It will be interesting to see how close to films that Amy and the Naughty Dog team can take video games. Deborah Mars is the Managing Producer at SCEA Santa Monica Studio who worked on PSN title, Fat Princess. The title had early uproar from various websites because the game was built around the mechanic of feeding your princess cake so she would weigh more and be harder to kidnap. In the end, Deborah and her team proved that Fat Princess is an incredibly fun title. Cammie Dunaway is the executive vice president of sales & marketing at Nintendo. As one of the most powerful people at Nintendo, she led the way to reach out to women gamers with the Nintendo DS and Wii. She has had a rough road being criticized for being too nice or even fake. I interviewed Cammie at the 2007 Women’s Conference and she was sweet but also very knowledgeable about the products available. She genuinely wants to see a more diverse audience enjoy gaming. We end our list with a female that has taken community on the Xbox 360 to another level. Christa Phillips Charter , better known as Trixie360, was responsible for many community initiatives for the 360 that is what makes us feel at home on the 360. She organized Game with Fame nights, Community Spotlights, Gamer Spotlights, and created/founded GamerChix a place where female Xbox gamers can gather to talk about gaming. Christa has always made herself available to gamers. Her new title is Social Media Lead of Xbox LIVE and we can’t see where she takes Community and Games next! I hope you enjoyed our list and I’d love to hear who you think should be on the list. We didn’t include the wonderful women that run amazing communities or clans, but they definitely could be here as well. I’d like to thank Robin Yang for working with me on ideas for this list. Here’s to another 10 years of greatness from women in games! Reprinted with permission from GamingAngels.com . If you ask Trina, she was born a geek girl at heart. Starting with the Atari 2600, Trina was quickly hooked. By eight she was programming games in Basic and starting her collection of comic books. Trina created a female-based guild for Phantasy Star Online. This started the idea of what a place on the web for women gamers would look like. GamingAngels.com was born in 2003 as a video game cosplay site and transformed in 2006 to an online gaming community. Today GamingAngels.com is more than just gaming. With the help of her team, Trina has created a community where women that love all things geek can speak freely about their hobby. Trina has appeared on panels and been interviewed about her strong opinions about women in gaming and technology fields. If she’s not working on GamingAngels.com , she might be cheering on the Vikings, playing videogames or reading Twitter. Find her on Xbox Live with Gamertag, GamingAngel or on Twitter as GamingAngel .

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The Ten Most Influential Women In Games Of The Past Decade [Top Ten]

The Ten Most Influential Women In Games Of The Past Decade [Top Ten]

Gaming Angel’s founder Trina Schwimmer’s list of women in games includes ten people who have helped change the game industry from the inside. While it’s not all inclusive, it is a very sound list. This is the time of the year where most sites are doing their top ten lists about different subjects. Personally, I hate top ten lists. If I’m going to do one, then it’s going to be about something I’m passionate about. Therefore, we have two top ten list articles on GamingAngels.com. Here we are looking at the ten women that influenced the gaming industry in a big way over the last ten years. This isn’t an all-inclusive list and I’d love for you to join in the conversation by including your nominees in the comments. The game industry is starting to see change and some of it is due to the women on this list paving the path. Here in random order, are ten women that really changed the game industry over the last ten years. Lucy Bradshaw has to start the list with her work on the Sims beginning in the year 2000. Lucy and the Maxis team created a game that would be named the best selling PC game to date. The Sims is also credited for bringing more women into playing games. Lucy Bradshaw now leads the efforts of the Maxis team on the various Spore titles. She is an amazing speaker and is always pushing the industry forward. Kim Swift took the game industry by storm with the much praised hit, Portal. Swift was hired by Valve after graduation and won many awards with a title that appealed to casual and the hardcore. Swift has now joined Airtight Games to assist with games aimed at a more diverse audience. Jade Raymond was the producer on Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed. While she had been a producer on previous titles including The Sims Online, Jade definitely had to put up with controversy from men that couldn’t get over her looks. Yes guys, it is possible to be gorgeous and talented. Corrinne Yu is an amazing woman. She’s the principal programmer at Microsoft’s Halo team. I met her at a GDC Women in Games luncheon where she was rewarded for her work on the Halo series. She dresses like a rock star and talks about programming theory unlike anyone I know. Corrinne is an inspiration as we look at the problem of not enough women going into programming as a discipline. Megan Gaiser is the President and CEO of Her Interactive. Through her work at Her Interactive, she has helped make intelligent games for the younger female audience. Her Interactive games create the Nancy Drew series of games that are very popular. Megan works hard in both talks and through her work at Her Interactive to get more girls interested in gaming both as a hobby and as a career. Kellee Santiago is an amazing young woman from the Interactive Media program at USC. She is the president and co-founder of ThatGameCompany, a company that strives to create games that create an emotion in the player. Their first two games, flOw and Flower on the Playstation 3 are not only beautiful but also appeal to a more diverse audience. During our interview with her at the Spike VGAs, it was great to see her passionate and excited about the future of ThatGameCompany. We look forward to Kellee pushing the boundaries of what we think about games. Amy Hennig works as Naughty Dog as the Creative Director on Uncharted and Uncharted 2. Uncharted 2 is second in the top 20 ranked Playstation 3 games on Metacritic. Amy concentrates on story and actors and it shows. Uncharted 2 has some of the best voice acting of any game out there. It will be interesting to see how close to films that Amy and the Naughty Dog team can take video games. Deborah Mars is the Managing Producer at SCEA Santa Monica Studio who worked on PSN title, Fat Princess. The title had early uproar from various websites because the game was built around the mechanic of feeding your princess cake so she would weigh more and be harder to kidnap. In the end, Deborah and her team proved that Fat Princess is an incredibly fun title. Cammie Dunaway is the executive vice president of sales & marketing at Nintendo. As one of the most powerful people at Nintendo, she led the way to reach out to women gamers with the Nintendo DS and Wii. She has had a rough road being criticized for being too nice or even fake. I interviewed Cammie at the 2007 Women’s Conference and she was sweet but also very knowledgeable about the products available. She genuinely wants to see a more diverse audience enjoy gaming. We end our list with a female that has taken community on the Xbox 360 to another level. Christa Phillips Charter , better known as Trixie360, was responsible for many community initiatives for the 360 that is what makes us feel at home on the 360. She organized Game with Fame nights, Community Spotlights, Gamer Spotlights, and created/founded GamerChix a place where female Xbox gamers can gather to talk about gaming. Christa has always made herself available to gamers. Her new title is Social Media Lead of Xbox LIVE and we can’t see where she takes Community and Games next! I hope you enjoyed our list and I’d love to hear who you think should be on the list. We didn’t include the wonderful women that run amazing communities or clans, but they definitely could be here as well. I’d like to thank Robin Yang for working with me on ideas for this list. Here’s to another 10 years of greatness from women in games! Reprinted with permission from GamingAngels.com . If you ask Trina, she was born a geek girl at heart. Starting with the Atari 2600, Trina was quickly hooked. By eight she was programming games in Basic and starting her collection of comic books. Trina created a female-based guild for Phantasy Star Online. This started the idea of what a place on the web for women gamers would look like. GamingAngels.com was born in 2003 as a video game cosplay site and transformed in 2006 to an online gaming community. Today GamingAngels.com is more than just gaming. With the help of her team, Trina has created a community where women that love all things geek can speak freely about their hobby. Trina has appeared on panels and been interviewed about her strong opinions about women in gaming and technology fields. If she’s not working on GamingAngels.com , she might be cheering on the Vikings, playing videogames or reading Twitter. Find her on Xbox Live with Gamertag, GamingAngel or on Twitter as GamingAngel .

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The Ten Most Influential Women In Games Of The Past Decade [Top Ten]

Back Pay is Hell, and Utah Devs Still Aren’t Getting Any [Labor]

When we last left Sensory Sweep , the Utah studio that just stopped paying employees, it cut a deal with the government to pay back nearly $1 million by September. That hasn’t happened, and its founder is facing tax evasion charges. The Salt Lake City Weekly has a comprehensive roundup of the Sensory Sweep fiasco, and it won’t fill you with holiday cheer. But I do encourage you to read it out of respect for these workers and their families, caught up in the studio’s deceptions and paid in promises for a year. In addition to the unpaid wages, the company had stopped paying insurance premiums and 401(k) contributions, even though workers’ checks (when they were getting them) had still been deducted for them. The lack of insurance means former employee Paul Grimshaw is looking at bankruptcy over an unpaid dental claim. The federal government, which negotiated the back-pay deal way back in January, is using threats of jail to collect back taxes from founder Dave Rushton and his wife Maureen, but not to get destitute employees the money they were owed. In other words, some guy and his wife made money off people’s free labor, and the government’s first in line to be paid, not the workers. Utah’s Labor Commission needs prosecutors if it’s going to bring state criminal charges against an employer who does not pay, and that kind of case hasn’t been brought in 10 years. Oh, and speaking of taxes? A former employee, who sent us this tip, told Kotaku that his (and others’) Social Security taxes hadn’t been paid in 2007, so workers are on the hook for that, too. A former studio employee, commenting on the Salt Lake Weekly’s article, sums up how Sensory Sweep was able to keep going even when the checks weren’t: “One of the most frustrating things about being a former Sensory Sweep employee was watching other people young to the industry walk into the company while it was floundering. Those kids would end up being paid in promises and optimistic half-truths, and they just didn’t have the available experience to know any better.” It is sad. Jobs in this industry are incredibly competitive because so many want to work in it, and will make great sacrifices to do so, and are reminded by people on the outside that this is somehow a dream job others would be happy to do for free. Speaking personally, I clench my fists every time I read someone say that kind of thing so casually. And out in Utah, where people also had mortgages, student loans, families and no other jobs in the industry to seek, I can see how that helped keep Sensory Sweep’s charade going. Sensory Sweep Shortchange [Salt Lake City Weekly]

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Back Pay is Hell, and Utah Devs Still Aren’t Getting Any [Labor]

Back Pay is Hell, and Utah Devs Still Aren’t Getting Any [Labor]

When we last left Sensory Sweep , the Utah studio that just stopped paying employees, it cut a deal with the government to pay back nearly $1 million by September. That hasn’t happened, and its founder is facing tax evasion charges. The Salt Lake City Weekly has a comprehensive roundup of the Sensory Sweep fiasco, and it won’t fill you with holiday cheer. But I do encourage you to read it out of respect for these workers and their families, caught up in the studio’s deceptions and paid in promises for a year. In addition to the unpaid wages, the company had stopped paying insurance premiums and 401(k) contributions, even though workers’ checks (when they were getting them) had still been deducted for them. The lack of insurance means former employee Paul Grimshaw is looking at bankruptcy over an unpaid dental claim. The federal government, which negotiated the back-pay deal way back in January, is using threats of jail to collect back taxes from founder Dave Rushton and his wife Maureen, but not to get destitute employees the money they were owed. In other words, some guy and his wife made money off people’s free labor, and the government’s first in line to be paid, not the workers. Utah’s Labor Commission needs prosecutors if it’s going to bring state criminal charges against an employer who does not pay, and that kind of case hasn’t been brought in 10 years. Oh, and speaking of taxes? A former employee, who sent us this tip, told Kotaku that his (and others’) Social Security taxes hadn’t been paid in 2007, so workers are on the hook for that, too. A former studio employee, commenting on the Salt Lake Weekly’s article, sums up how Sensory Sweep was able to keep going even when the checks weren’t: “One of the most frustrating things about being a former Sensory Sweep employee was watching other people young to the industry walk into the company while it was floundering. Those kids would end up being paid in promises and optimistic half-truths, and they just didn’t have the available experience to know any better.” It is sad. Jobs in this industry are incredibly competitive because so many want to work in it, and will make great sacrifices to do so, and are reminded by people on the outside that this is somehow a dream job others would be happy to do for free. Speaking personally, I clench my fists every time I read someone say that kind of thing so casually. And out in Utah, where people also had mortgages, student loans, families and no other jobs in the industry to seek, I can see how that helped keep Sensory Sweep’s charade going. Sensory Sweep Shortchange [Salt Lake City Weekly]

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Back Pay is Hell, and Utah Devs Still Aren’t Getting Any [Labor]

Back Pay is Hell, and Utah Devs Still Aren’t Getting Any [Labor]

When we last left Sensory Sweep , the Utah studio that just stopped paying employees, it cut a deal with the government to pay back nearly $1 million by September. That hasn’t happened, and its founder is facing tax evasion charges. The Salt Lake City Weekly has a comprehensive roundup of the Sensory Sweep fiasco, and it won’t fill you with holiday cheer. But I do encourage you to read it out of respect for these workers and their families, caught up in the studio’s deceptions and paid in promises for a year. In addition to the unpaid wages, the company had stopped paying insurance premiums and 401(k) contributions, even though workers’ checks (when they were getting them) had still been deducted for them. The lack of insurance means former employee Paul Grimshaw is looking at bankruptcy over an unpaid dental claim. The federal government, which negotiated the back-pay deal way back in January, is using threats of jail to collect back taxes from founder Dave Rushton and his wife Maureen, but not to get destitute employees the money they were owed. In other words, some guy and his wife made money off people’s free labor, and the government’s first in line to be paid, not the workers. Utah’s Labor Commission needs prosecutors if it’s going to bring state criminal charges against an employer who does not pay, and that kind of case hasn’t been brought in 10 years. Oh, and speaking of taxes? A former employee, who sent us this tip, told Kotaku that his (and others’) Social Security taxes hadn’t been paid in 2007, so workers are on the hook for that, too. A former studio employee, commenting on the Salt Lake Weekly’s article, sums up how Sensory Sweep was able to keep going even when the checks weren’t: “One of the most frustrating things about being a former Sensory Sweep employee was watching other people young to the industry walk into the company while it was floundering. Those kids would end up being paid in promises and optimistic half-truths, and they just didn’t have the available experience to know any better.” It is sad. Jobs in this industry are incredibly competitive because so many want to work in it, and will make great sacrifices to do so, and are reminded by people on the outside that this is somehow a dream job others would be happy to do for free. Speaking personally, I clench my fists every time I read someone say that kind of thing so casually. And out in Utah, where people also had mortgages, student loans, families and no other jobs in the industry to seek, I can see how that helped keep Sensory Sweep’s charade going. Sensory Sweep Shortchange [Salt Lake City Weekly]

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Back Pay is Hell, and Utah Devs Still Aren’t Getting Any [Labor]

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