Bruce Straley hasn’t worked at Naughty Dog for six years, but the director of the original PlayStation 3 version of The Last of Us is upset that he isn’t credited in the HBO version that started airing this week.
Straley’s relationship with Naughty Dog and Sony is called “Strained” in an interview with The Los Angeles Times. He told the outlet that the fact that he wasn’t credited in the show even though he was the director of the source material made him think about unionizing the games industry as a way to make sure that creative works are paid for and credited properly.
Straley said, “The fact that someone who helped make that world and those characters aren’t getting a credit or a nickel for the work they did is a good reason to join a union.” “Maybe the video game industry needs unions to protect the people who make games.”
Straley isn’t mentioned in the HBO show’s credits, but his work on the original game was mentioned on a separate screen in The Last of Us Part I remake that came out on PlayStation 5. That was like how Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End thanked former series director Amy Hennig for her work on the series, even though she had left the studio while that game was being made.
Straley left Naughty Dog years ago and went on to start a new company called Wildflower Interactive, which is now making its first game.
Crediting in video games has become a hot topic lately because companies are finding more ways to avoid putting people’s names in the credits of projects they worked on. This month, it was found out that several developers who worked on The Callisto Protocol were not given credit for their work, even though they should have been.
There are more and more talks of unionization in the video game industry as workers speak out about the terrible conditions at AAA companies like Activision Blizzard. Over the years, people have also said that Naughty Dog is a crunch. Neil Druckmann, co-president of the studio, said recently that the studio is looking into ways to fix these problems, like not announcing games as early as it did with The Last of Us Part II and Uncharted 4 so that development schedules are more realistic.
