In last week’s Massively Overthinking roundtable on the weird MMO trainwrecks that nobody noticed in 2022, MOP’s Justin brought up one I had forgotten: the hasty departure of the rather well-liked producer Oleg “Raninia” Brodskiy from Standing Stone Games and Lord of the Rings Online. In his year-long role on LOTRO, he’d improved communication from the studio at a time when it very much needed it, and his departure was a shock – particularly when SSG didn’t explain it or replace him.
But maybe we’re getting a little bit of sunlight on the matter now, as over the weekend, Brodskiy retweeted the “rage-applying” Fortune headline making the rounds with the notation, “It me,” followed by, “$50k and a franchise level director title later, I’d say it’s worked out so far.” The implication here is that he chose to leave his last role – as a Producer II at SSG – for a major pay bump and a better title (he’s currently Development Director at Firaxis).
$50k and a franchise level director title later, I’d say it’s worked out so far
— Oleg Brodskiy (@Combrod_) January 15, 2023
We reached out to Brodskiy for clarification, and understandably he politely (and wisely) declined to comment. Instead, he pointed us to a tweet he issued back in September during which he directly compared the Producer II’s pay to the Development Director’s pay. (The latter pays $57,000 more.)
Producer II: $118k
Development Director: $175kI cannot overstate how invaluable it is to be aware of potential opportunities and pursue them. I am incredibly lucky and decently good at my job, but I have seen so many talented people be underpaid and living with it :( https://t.co/JLF9Ez9zgd
— Oleg Brodskiy (@Combrod_) September 5, 2022
Few MMO fans will be surprised to learn that the MMO industry is not a wealth of riches and that most people working on MMORPGs in particular are very much underpaid and undervalued compared to other genres, which has certainly contributed to the brain-drain many MMO companies have seen over the last decade. For example, Brodskiy’s new gig at Firaxis? He’s heading up no less than the Civilization franchise, meaning the MMO genre lost a good producer to the strategy side of gaming.
Finally – and this is only tangentially related – buried in Brodskiy’s Linkedin resume is a note about LOTRO’s last expansion that gives the most updated clue about the current state of the game we’ve gotten: “Released Fate of Gundabad, the most successful expansion released by Standing Stone Games, leading to the highest KPIs for The Lord of the Rings: Online since 2013.”
