A Polish game developer studio by the name of Spectrum Studios may have found itself in a steamy situation, quite literally, after it had published a recruitment advertisement with a bizarre request: to attend naked sauna sessions with the entire team.
The studio’s Creative Director, Jacek Piorkowsky posted the ad on LinkedIn. And before some of you ask: yes, his staff does include female employees and based on some of his responses, not all of them seemed to be comfortable with the idea.
Found an article in Polish media with the actual ad: pic.twitter.com/IGBJXgLN7e
— Simon Christiansen (@SimonChris1729) June 18, 2024
Apparently, the reason Piorkowski is demanding these naked sauna sessions is that Spectrum Studio is working on a game, where the main character is a “saunamaster”. He reasons that by holding these naked sauna meetings, he believes that his storytellers will be able to come up with some great content and scenes, which he justifies by saying that his “narrative girls” have been able to write some “awesome scenes.”
Piorkowski also wrote in another post that Spectrum Studio is able to organise female-only naked sauna sessions, to which they already did. As for why he couldn’t just allow staff to wear a towel instead of being naked, he reasons that a towel gets drenched after a few seconds in the steam box and leaving it on throughout may result in fungal infection.
It’s neither wrong nor unusual for a game company to ask its developers to immerse themselves in scenarios and themes that are prevalent in the game they are developing, but it goes without saying that even that has limits. Bethesda, as an example, didn’t ask its developers to go out on a rip-and-tear killing spree when they were making the DOOM reboot.
