Upon starting up the finished product, fans may notice that Gearbox’s logo isn’t the only one that appears.
“It’s a big, ambitious game,” Pitchford explained. “Some of the other studios involved, we decided that these guys are awesome. They did a lot of really valuable work. We’re not contractually obligated to put anybody’s credits there, but we value talent and respect talent. We wanted to make sure that those logos were there and that work was represented. In big efforts, that’s not an uncommon thing. You don’t usually see it up front.”
Pitchford explained the contribution of each studio, noting that Demiurge (the studio behind Shoot Many Robots) was “with us at the very beginning, helping us to explore networking and multiplayer,” as well as assisting with Colonial Marines’ Wii U port. Houston-based TimeGate Studios, meanwhile, worked on “probably about 20 or 25 percent of the total time,” with Pitchford noting that “if you take preproduction out of it, their effort’s probably equivalent to ours. Now, it’s not fair to take preproduction out of it, but that says a lot about how much horsepower those guys put into it.” Other contributions came from Nerve Software, who built multiplayer maps for the game.