Gunzilla Games CEO calls developer salary delay "cost optimization"
Vlad Korolev, CEO and co-founder of Gunzilla Games, commented on the news about the delay in employee salaries.
Vlad Korolev, CEO and co-founder of Gunzilla Games, commented on the news about the delay in employee salaries.
In a lengthy post on X (Twitter), Korolev boasted about the success of the free-to-play battle royale game Off the Grid. According to him, the project has hundreds of thousands of paid subscribers and is gaining up to 3,000 new players every day.
«OTG now has the highest player retention rate we’ve ever seen — 2.5 times higher than in October 2024, reaching an industry-record D1 retention rate,» noted Vlad Korolev.
He stated that there is a lot of hate and distrust directed at the studio and the game, but despite this, Gunzilla Games is constantly releasing updates and adding new features.
«OTG is a game created by a company of over 400 employees, developed over 6 years, in which the founders invested tens of millions of dollars before raising a single dollar from external sources. In 6 years, there was not a single day when anyone worked in the „work-life balance“ mode — it was a 24/7 struggle to release a project of the scale of Call of Duty, created by an independent studio,» said the head of Gunzilla Games.
In 2026, studio employees began to publicly talk about non-payment, and management promised to close the issue by the end of March 2026. However, by early April, the debt had not been repaid .
According to the developers, payment delays at Gunzilla Games have been going on since June 2025. During this time, employees were given various reasons: a banking error, waiting for investments, and later the unlocking of part of the assets after the cliff period ended.
Head of recruitment Anna Savina said on LinkedIn that Gunzilla Games still has not paid «a significant debt that spans several months.» According to her, the studio still has not paid the salaries of some of its employees, there is no clear timetable for when the company plans to pay off the debt, and the CEO ignores employees’ requests for information about their unpaid wages.
«Same situation. I didn’t receive payments for August and September,» added Principal Hard Surface Artist Oleksandr Linovychenko.
«I’m in exactly the same situation. Five months without a salary. Moreover, during a personal meeting, when the CEO heard that I wasn’t going to work for the idea and that I wanted proof that I would be paid, he promised in front of my colleagues to pay me everything and terminate our working relationship within 24 hours. As you can imagine, they deprived me of all access rights and didn’t pay me,» says senior quality control engineer Anton Paliy.
After Western video game publications began writing about salary delays at Gunzilla Games, Anna Savina reported that the studio had resolved her debt problem.
«I want to thank everyone for their support and for bringing attention to this case. My goal was to draw attention to a systemic problem, and I sincerely hope that this will lead to positive change for all current and former team members,» she noted.
According to Vlad Korolev, reports that Gunzilla Games illegally fired contractors or delayed their payments are being spread by haters.
«Yes, we are optimizing costs — as all companies in the gaming, crypto, and technology industries are doing now. We have been doing this for over a year. And so, in order not to disrupt the company’s work, some payments can be scheduled in a way that corresponds to the company’s cash flow — not always for each individual. This is the reality of the world we live in,» the studio head explained.
He claims that Gunzilla Games full-time employees have never had their salaries delayed for more than a week in the past 6 years and apologized for the inconvenience.
«It is also worth noting that one of the loudest voices — the contractor who finished working with us just a week ago — received payment immediately. OTG has been operating for over 1.5 years, and we are still here — no matter how much some people would like to see otherwise,» said Vlad Korolev.
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Gunzilla Games hasn’t paid for months: employees report debts from 2025 and three waves of layoffs
Gunzilla Games hasn’t paid for months: employees report debts from 2025 and three waves of layoffs
Ukrainian-German Gunzilla Games delays employee salaries for 4–6 months: employee post
Ukrainian-German Gunzilla Games delays employee salaries for 4–6 months: employee post
Ukrainian-German Gunzilla Games releases Off The Grid game in EGS Early Access
Ukrainian-German Gunzilla Games releases Off The Grid game in EGS Early Access
