Full time volunteers are paid a salary, while part-time volunteers who work on translation and community moderating are paid in participation certificates and game codes.

The studio explained to Well Played that the unpaid aspect “does not relate to code writing or development itself… just things like localization and moderation.” Apparently, those jobs aren’t considered to be a part of game development at Fntastic, even though they very much are at AAA studios.

It’s also a little worrying that they’re willing to use unpaid part-timers to contribute features for an open world MMO, a type of game that is famously simple and easy to make.