Glen Schofield: Krafton ‘Forced’ The Callisto Protocol to Ship Three Months Early

Glen Schofield is the developer behind Dead Space and the founder of Striking Distance Studios, the studio behind The Callisto Protocol (a 2022 sci-fi survival horror game set on a prison moon). Krafton is the Korean publisher best known for PUBG. In a GamesIndustry.biz interview published October 8 and amplified by Eurogamer today, Schofield says Krafton forced The Callisto Protocol to ship three months earlier than the studio had been promised. The interview details the COVID-era disruption, the failed three-month extension, and the 86 patches that followed the December 1, 2022 launch.

Krafton allegedly granted Striking Distance three extra months of development to recover from pandemic setbacks, then rescinded the extension late in production. “I was forced to ship the game,” Schofield said. “I’m mad at myself, there’s no doubt. I was so stunned by that decision, because we had fucking Covid.” With teams in California and Spain repeatedly sidelined, he said the studio lost four to six people per month to sickness (out of a team of about 100). One of those sick team members was “one of my best friends,” he said.

Schofield also said Krafton demanded a PlayStation 4 release alongside the PS5 version. That mandate cost an extra $20 million. It also required shipping 200 dev kits during the global chip shortage. Per Eurogamer’s reporting on the same interview, the studio built its own publishing and marketing infrastructure. The reason: Krafton “lacked the necessary experience to release a single-player physical game.”

The math: Schofield’s ideal AAA budget, per the same interview, is $70 million. The $20M PS4 surcharge is nearly 30% of that, on top of whatever Krafton was already paying for development. Schofield also says a creative idea (reusing older-game assets) could have saved another $25 million, putting a Callisto-style game at about $60 million for what we used to think was AAA. Add the 86 patches Striking Distance shipped over the first year (one every 4.25 days, on average) and a final DLC, and the post-launch support bill dwarfs the delay that wasn’t granted.

The Callisto Protocol launched on December 1, 2022, to mixed reviews, and is on our release calendar. Schofield said Krafton considered the game “a complete failure” and passed on his pitch for a sequel set on a giant space station. Striking Distance shipped those 86 patches and the DLC before Schofield left the studio in 2023. He announced his retirement from the games industry this past summer.

The pattern: Schofield’s claim isn’t new. Per Eurogamer, he made the same three-month-delay argument in a 2023 interview without naming management. The new wrinkle this time is the named critique (a lot of them were caused by Korean management) and the $20M PS4 surcharge framing. Eurogamer’s follow-up also links the Subnautica 2 bonus lawsuit, in which Krafton agreed to pay bonuses to all Subnautica 2 staffers after a public dispute with the studio’s creators. Side by side, the shape is identical: a creator-developer fight, a public disclosure, and Krafton staying quiet on the record.

Our read: Schofield’s account is one developer’s side of a dispute, not an adjudicated one. The concrete numbers (the $20M PS4 version, the 86 patches, the three-month extension he says was promised then rescinded) are checkable. The pattern is harder to dismiss. For players, the upshot: there is no Callisto Protocol sequel in the works, and the December 2022 launch is unlikely to get a re-release-style do-over.

Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report