Aeon Must Die State of Play trailer was purportedly outsourced, devs had already quit due to crunch

The Aeon Must Die trailer shown during yesterday's State of Play event was purportedly outsourced - apparently the devs had already quit the project due to crunch.

Aeon Must Die is in development at Limestone Games and will be published by Focus Home Interactive. However, shortly before its trailer aired during yesterday's State of Play showcase, a group of people claiming to be the original developers accused Limestone of inducing crunch and committing IP theft. According to these people, they quite Limestone last week.

Even the outsourced artists commissioned to work on the trailer after the original devs left were not provided with official contracts, according to the information revealed.

Said information is included in the description a YouTube video posted by Erkki Poots, which you can check out for yourself below.

"This trailer was created with abuse, manipulation, theft," reads the video description. "Find out the truth about the development of the game here [Dropbox]."

This Dropbox folder collects personal accounts from several of the devs involved, who have all made allegations against Limestone.

"People who have worked on every shot of this are no longer with the company holding IP rights," the description continues. "Some were not even paid for their work."

"This trailer has a pending conflict of IP. The real IP for the game was stolen from the creators via foul play. Final reaction of the publisher to this information remains to be seen."

Aeon Must Die publisher Focus Home Interactive recently posted a statement referring to the situation on Twitter, which you can check out below.

"Focus Home Interactive has always praised and supported all our partner studios and the developers who compose the creative teams," the statement reads. "We pride ourselves on treating our own employees and third party developers fairly and respectfully and this will not change."

"Focus Home Interactive was informed of serious allegations raised by some of the developers at Limestone who have worked on the creation of the video game Aeon Must Die," it continues. "These grievances are directed at Limestone, their direct employer."

"As the publisher of this video game, Focus is carefully looking into these allegations and will draw the necessary conclusions if they are proved to be well-founded, and then take all appropriate measures."

"No further comment will be shared until we have a clearer and complete view on the matter."

It's unclear at present whether the allegations are true or not, but if so, hopefully these devs are able to prove Limestone's misconduct and can reclaim the rights to their game.