At Gunzilla Games, a studio with Ukrainian roots and an office in Kyiv, the salary delays that were publicly discussed in the winter have still not disappeared. Some employees claim that they have not seen money for several months, and some talk about debts dating back to the fall of 2025.
At Gunzilla Games, a studio with Ukrainian roots and an office in Kyiv, the salary delays that were publicly discussed in the winter have still not disappeared. Some employees claim that they have not seen money for several months, and some talk about debts dating back to the fall of 2025.
As GameDev DOU reports, in February, studio employees began to publicly talk about non-payment, and management promised to close the issue by the end of March 2026. However, as of early April, according to the publication’s sources, the debt had not been repaid.
The problems, according to the interlocutors, did not start yesterday. The company has been delaying payments since June 2025. During this time, employees were given various reasons: a bank error, waiting for investments, and later the unblocking of part of the assets after the cliff period ended. One of the interlocutors says that the company owes him $10,000, and the total debt to specialists, according to his estimate, reaches hundreds of thousands of dollars.
An anonymous employee of the Frankfurt office described the new explanation as follows: «Some of the assets are expected to be unblocked at the end of the month, and this is what is planned to cover the debt.» But these scenarios, he said, have repeatedly failed.
The situation is complicated by the format of cooperation. Some specialists work not under employment contracts, but under cooperation agreements. One of the employees of the Kyiv office directly says that she does not have all the signed acts of work performed, and therefore even the prospects of the court remain vague. Another employee of the German branch noted that the dispute will have to be resolved through a court in Germany, which means additional costs for local lawyers.
In parallel, the studio has gone through three waves of layoffs. While Gunzilla employed approximately 470 people in 2024 and early 2025, according to the publication, about 250 remain now. Senior Animator Paul Creamer has already publicly stated that he personally has not received a salary since October 2025, although the company, according to him, still expected the team to continue working.
Against the backdrop of these problems, another fact is particularly striking: Gunzilla is known not only for the game Off The Grid, but also for buying the rights to Game Informer in 2025 after the magazine closed.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how Gunzilla Studio released the 150-player battle royale Off The Grid in early access on PC (on the Epic Games Store) and consoles. The game features NFT items, and the game map features Ukrainian locations.
