WALL STREET — A prominent gaming executive has reportedly gotten blood all over their bonus check after culling a studio who failed to meet their nebulous expectations.
The executive was dissatisfied with the performance of the studio’s latest game, which led to the bloodletting, according to a source close to the matter who anonymously leaked the incident on social media.
“The game launched and was a critical and commercial success, it even won a few awards, but the boss said he expected more from them,” The source said. “It wasn’t the biggest seller of the year, but how many people can you really expect to play a narrative driven rhythm game? The boss saw it differently I guess. The last thing I saw before it happened was him leaving the building with a sawed off shotgun and a Bowie knife, and humming ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’.”
A survivor of the massacre, who was asleep in the closet reserved for QA testers to get a couple hours of sleep between twenty hour shifts, recalled what they heard happening once the executive arrived at their satellite office.
“There were a lot of screams of confusion, and high maniacal laughter between the gunfire,” The tester recalled. “Our creative director tried to intervene, but was cut off mid-sentence after getting his throat slashed with the Bowie knife. After that I could hear him going through the rest of the studio ranting about a lack of monetization, in-game currency, or a battle pass, but he was the one who signed off on all those decisions! At one point he opened the door to the QA sleeping closet / utility room, and just said ‘Remember what happened here’ before walking away.”
Audio recordings made in the executive’s office shed some light on the immediate aftermath of the slaughter.
“I told them this would happen if they didn’t meet expectations,” The executive said on the recording. Another as yet unidentified person responded, “You can only give so many warnings before you’re forced to make an example out of some of them” The voice agreed.
“Anyway, that should make the shareholders happy. Till next quarter anyway.” At this point in the recording the two men laughed together for approximately five minutes before the executive exclaimed, “Dammit, I got blood all over my bonus check!”
At press time, the coroner was loading the bodies of the slaughtered into vans and the main office issued a statement calling it “A tragic workplace accident”.
