Skull Island: Rise of Kong released on October 17th to some less than great reviews. IguanaBee, an indie game development studio based in Santiago, released the title to much public scrutiny with many people declaring Skull Island: Rise Of Kong the worst game of the year, with some sarcastically joining in and saying that it was a triumph in gaming. The game features some obviously outdated graphics with some bland level design all to do with King Kong, one of the most iconic monsters in fiction. A lot of the game has recently become just another running joke of the internet. 

New King Kong game looks like game of the year material pic.twitter.com/TXuZYQ53EL

— Rick (@RickDaSquirrel) October 16, 2023

 All of the criticism and hatred that the studio is getting is seemingly unwarranted as it was revealed in an article written by Ash Parrish from The Verge that the developers were tasked with completing the game from the ground up in only a year. IguanaBee being an Indie studio makes this almost impossible. 

The development process of this game was started in June of last year and it was aimed to end on June 2nd this year. So one year development process,

It was very common for us not to be provided with all the information about the project, Which was quite frustrating when working because we had to improvise with the limited information we had on hand. – IguanaBee anonymous employee

This seems to be yet another example of bigger publishing studios taking advantage of smaller developers by making impossible deadlines, and increasing crunch times. The publisher being GameMill, has already in the past dealt with criticisms of overworking other smaller studios. The fact that these things are happening even in the biggest studios today causes even greater concern for studios such as IguanaBee. The Verge mentions reaching out to GameMill for a comment regarding the criticism of both the game and work-related problems but GameMill has yet to comment. It does seem very ironic that a studio named GameMill is being criticized for seemingly pushing games out with no care for their quality.