Despite its beautiful Ori games, Moon Studios is called an ‘oppressive’ place to work

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
March 18, 2022
Updated June 19, 2025
44 min

Gaming fans know Moon Studios for its amazing Ori games with beautiful art and emotional stories. But a number of current and former employees consider the Ori studio an oppressive place to work. That is according to GamesBeat‘s interviews with Moon developers.

Ori and the Blind Forest debuted in 2015 under publisher Microsoft. It was profitable after a few weeks while earning an 88% rating on the review-aggregation platform Metacritic. Multiple publications also nominated it for various awards and accolades. Moon then went on to release the sequel, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, in 2020 to even greater acclaim – including GamesBeat’s 2020 game of the year award. We love the Ori games.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.