Fullbright and Open Roads Developers Separate

"It's just no longer Fullbright's place to represent Open Roads publicly going forward."

As of 12th May 2023, the developers behind Gone Home and the upcoming Open Roads have parted ways with their founder Steve Gaynor and the Fullbright name. This announcement comes not from what are now known as "The Open Roads Team" or from their publisher Annapurna Interactive, but Gaynor himself in his first Fullbright newsletter in years.

In the newsletter, Gaynor alludes to "serious turmoil" at the studio that came to light shortly after the announcement of Open Roads and acknowledges that events have shown his "own strengths do not lie with attempting to manage a large project or direct the work of others", but does not detail what happened at Fullbright.

Within a year and a half of Open Roads' announcement at the 2020 Game Awards, fifteen employees left Fullbright. Current and former members of the studio spoke to Polygon in 2021 about their concerns with Ganyor's behaviour toward them, specifically the women. They emphasised that the behaviour did not veer into sexual harassment or explicit sexism, but Gaynor's "controlling" behaviour and "demeaning presence" that wore many down, to the point of their quitting en masse. The overall impression was that Gaynor saw Open Roads less as the team's game and more as his; Fullbright as an extension of his auteurship. Indeed, his personal Twitter account was Fullbright until forced to change it by the unrest in May 2021.

By the time of the Polygon report, Annapurna were already aware of the situation and had conducted an internal investigation, but the team were dissatisfied. When speaking to People Make Games in 2022, the staff - again anonymous for fear of repercussions from either Annapurna or Gaynor - said that Annapurna "talked around" the issue when asking the staff what they would need to finish the project and the prospect of removing Gaynor from his position at the head of the studio and writer on Open Roads was not brought up.

After the report went out and news of Gaynor's misconduct was public knowledge, the Open Roads twitter issued a statement now deleted saying : "Fullbright's co-founder Steve Gaynor has stepped back from his role as creative lead and manager, and transitioned to a role as a writer". The statement could also be found on the game's website, which was a part of Fullbright's website and is currently down. A day later, Gaynor issued a statement on twitter saying much of the same and acknowledging his "hurtful" leadership, but also not giving details. Through all of this, Annapurna Interactive remained silent and continues to do so.

When the changeover from Fullbright to The Open Roads Team happened is unclear : Gaynor's influence on the game was gone from June 2021 according to the Game Informer interviews and Amy Fincher's job as executive producer on Open Roads changed from under Fullbright to under Annapurna in September 2022. The game's website and Steam page were both linked to Fullbright as recently as early May and the developer still hasn't been updated on Annapurna's website. Whether Gaynor's announcement was ahead of or instead of a statement from Annapurna or The Open Roads Team, the developer is once again in his shadow, hopefully for the last time.

Open Roads is a mother-daughter road trip currently in development by The Open Roads Team at Annapurna Interactive. In light of its rocky development, the release date is unknown.

https://youtu.be/xDPzZkx0cPs?t=1015
https://fullbright.cmail20.com/t/t-e-fhtudtt-pikikkhuk-k/
https://web.archive.org/web/20210806094550/https://twitter.com/OpenRoadsGame/status/1423071532952080386
https://twitter.com/SteveGaynorPDX/status/1423094322396762113?cxt=HHwWgsCsheKv7L8nAAAA
https://www.gameinformer.com/feature/2022/07/21/a-new-destination-how-open-roads-changed-direction-and-saved-its-turbulent-road
https://www.polygon.com/22610490/fullbright-steve-gaynor-controversy-stepped-down-open-roads

(originally published as part of Girl Games Network #1 on 21/5/2023; Open Roads was released on 28/3/2024)