Last week, veteran game developer Cliff “CliffyB” Bleszinski ruffled more than a few feathers when he accused Fortnite developer Epic Games of poaching developers from the Radical Heights development team. Both Fortnite and Radical Heights are battle royale games and CliffyB said that the team has “plenty of ways” to make Radical Heights stand out in the genre “but they may never see the light of day if [Epic Games] keep doing this.”
CliffyB’s comments quickly drew the ire of Fortnite fans who slammed Radical Heights developer Boss Key Productions for its “blatant” attempt at a battle royale cash grab. However, the developer also received criticism from one former Boss Key dev who had left to join Epic Games.
William McCarroll, who has been a senior programmer at Epic Games since March and previously worked at Boss Key as a principal online engineer from 2014-2018, responded to the tweet saying that “assuming that Epic is the one starting contact / poaching is a bit presumptuous.”
McCarroll goes on to explain that “we all had our own reasons for making the choice to leave [Boss Key] for Epic,” adding that it is “hurtful” to “act like we are commodities being stolen.” The new Epic Games employee closes out the tweet reminding CliffyB that “we are people first and foremost.”
In a previous tweet published as McCarroll was just leaving Boss Key, the programmer said “I really enjoyed working with everyone there,” also wishing the team the “best of luck.” Some of the developer’s more recent tweets are responses to Radical Heights players, answering their questions about the game’s currency system and cosmetics, so it seems as though there are no hard feelings.
But just because Boss Key is a relatively positive place to work and no one at Epic Games is explicitly poaching developer from Boss Key, there are other reasons why developers may want to leave. For example, the failure of Lawbreakers may have led some developers to seek out more successful games that have brighter futures. The fact that Boss Key co-founder Arjan Brussee left Boss Key for Epic Games in December may have also been a factor in some of those departures.
Moreover, since Radical Heights is built on Unreal Engine 4 which is developed by Epic Games, those with significant experience with that technology may have wanted to work at its creator. There is a myriad of possible factors here, as McCarroll notes, and so it’s understandable why some are unhappy with CliffyB’s accusations.
Radical Heights is available now in early access on PC.
