Recent reports by certain anonymous former developers at Team Bondi alleged a poor working environment at the L.A. Noire developer. Now, according to a report by GamesIndustry.biz, the dysfunctional relationship extended to the game's publisher, Rockstar.
"I've heard a lot about Rockstar's disdain for Team Bondi, and it has been made quite clear that they will not publish Team Bondi's next game," said an anonymous source. "Team Bondi are trying to find another publisher for their next title, but the relationship with Rockstar has been badly damaged - Brendan treats L.A. Noire like a success due to his vision but I think Rockstar are the ones who saved the project. They continued to sink money into L.A. Noire, and their marketing was fantastic. Without their continued support, Team Bondi would have gone under several years ago."
"Rockstar also made a huge contribution to the development; their producers were increasingly influential over the last two years of the game's development, and overruled many of the insane decisions made by Team Bondi management,” the sources continued. "At a lower level, Rockstar also pitched in with programmers, animators, artists, QA, etc. Part of the conflict between Team Bondi and Rockstar was due to Rockstar's frustration with Team Bondi's direction, and eventually Team Bondi's management in turn resented Rockstar for taking lots of creative control.”
"It's also worth pointing out that Rockstar used to be very keen on making Team Bondi something like 'Rockstar Sydney' - the more they worked with Team Bondi management, the more they came to understand that this was a terrible idea,” the sources added.
Roughly 130 former Team Bondi developers have come out and said they were left off L.A. Noire's credits. Additionally, claims of verbal abuse by Team Bondi head man Brendan McNamara, along with 110-hour weeks sans overtime, have prompted the International Game Developers Association to investigate the situation.
