The game development studio behind the recent open world racing game Test Drive Unlimited 2 is holding a one day strike in order to protest actions from its parent company Atari. Gamasutra reports that France-based Eden Studios is supposed to hold the strike today "to show the employees determination and mobilization."
According to the story, the studio is in the middle of a redundancy plan that will ultimately see over half of Eden Studios" 80 employees laid off. This follows the release of Test Drive Unlimited 2 earlier this year for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms. The game suffered from a number of technical issues for all of its versions just after its launch that took large patches to fix. Ultimately the game got mediocre reviews from critics.
Gamasutra"s story said they had received a letter from Eden Studios reps outlining the reasons for the one day strike. They blame Atari executives for alleged mismanagement of the company, stating, "For several years we are witnessing multiple leader changes at its head, they did not hesitate to get rich despite financial difficulties." The employees want to have more say in the current redundancy plan and to "communicate and interact with the CEO, Jim Wilson, who has never introduced himself to his employees."
Officially Atari has yet to respond to the one day strike by Eden Studio employees. The publisher has been moving toward developing and releasing more downloadable game titles in recent months although it still has a major retail product, the fantasy RPG Neverwinter from developer Cryptic Studios, planned for release late in 2011.