A new report from People Make Games has detailed disturbing allegations of abuse towards employees at Indonesian studio Brandoville, a company used for art and animation support in games such as Age of Empires 4 and Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
In 2021, People Make Games reported on crunch culture and the industry’s reliance on outsourcing to external developers in order to meet deadlines. Brandoville Studios was one such developer. Little has changed in the industry since that report, but Brandoville’s closure a few months ago has lead its employees to now share further stories of their experiences at the studio.
At the centre of this report is Christa Sydney, who worked at the company from 2019 until 2024 and says she was subjected to mental and physical abuse by commissioner Kwan Cherry Lai, wife of Brandoville CEO Ken Lai, who ran day-to-day operations.
The full report can be watched in the below video, though please note it contains some incredibly harrowing content and footage.
Sydney describes how Cherry Lai took her under her wing following a dispute early in her career, but how this led to toxic abuse. Initially, Lai imposed a strict working schedule on employees and would purposefully divide employees through gossip and demeaning words, Sydney said.
Sydney was actually part of People Make Games’ previous report, but says she was later forced by Lai to film a statement in support of Brandoville against her will. Other employees felt she was being brainwashed, it’s reported.
Sydney now says she was then continuously abused by Lai, including during a work trip to the XDS ’22 conference where Lai micromanaged her time and only allowed her to sleep for a few minutes over the course of four days leading up to the event. Further abuse included imposing daily Christian worship, forcing Sydney to write lines like a schoolchild, daily check-ins over WhatsApp of her outfits as part of “quality control”, and humiliating her in front of colleagues.
Eventually Lai’s abuse became physical, forcing Sydney to film herself slapping her face 100 times as punishment, or hitting her head against a door frame until she was concussed before forcing an apology.
Another employee, Caesarion Balthazar, had an arrangement with Lai where she would take part of his salary to assist with his spending habits. This led to her, in Balthazar’s words, stealing an amount of money equivalent to a month’s salary. Additionally, Balthazar says he was told he owed money for expensive training programmes he hadn’t yet taken when he tried to leave the company.