Among Us developer InnerSloth announced its new Airship map will be released on March 31. It took the five-person team a bit longer than expected to get this new content ready for takeoff, due to several unexpected maintenance issues raised by the millions of players the murder-mystery game attracts daily. That has led some fans to wonder why InnerSloth doesn't simply hire more staff, but the Among Us developer explained that wouldn't be as easy as it sounds.
Among Us was created by InnerSloth's three founding members, Marcus Bromander, Forest Willard, and Amy Liu. Since its explosion in popularity, the studio has hired Victoria Tran as its Community Director and Adriel Wallick as its lead Unity Engine programmer. Those two new team members nearly doubled the size of the studio. Still, InnerSloth's newfound fame has made rolling out major changes to Among Us and to the company exponentially more difficult.
As part of a March 18 developer update, InnerSloth revealed that, while there are actually "some new hires on the way," there are three major reasons why it's taking so long for the studio to expand its staff size. The underlying rationale of it all, though, is that growing the team steadily and fairly requires a lot of work that would slow down Among Us content updates and maintenance.
Why Doesn't Among Us Developer InnerSloth Hire More People?
Studio Dynamics
InnerSloth wants to keep the team small and close-knit in order to avoid management issues and clashes with potential new hires. Ensuring a steady workflow in game development requires all team members understand and agree on the team's next steps. That will become increasingly more difficult if more people join InnerSloth.
Hiring People Is A Full-Time Job
Since the team is so close, InnerSloth wants to make sure applicants align with the company culture. Parsing through hundreds of resumes, organizing interviews, and onboarding new-hires is a full-time job that would keep current employees from developing new content and shipping patches. There's a reason why big corporations have teams dedicated to recruiting new members, and InnerSloth has limited resources to expand its staff on an ongoing basis.
Ensuring An Equitable Workplace
InnerSloth also expressed its dedication to ensuring all of its new hires are onboarded seamlessly and swiftly. That includes setting up insurance and establishing a vacation day policy that applies to all team members. These tasks are typically handled by a company's human resources department, which InnerSloth has outsourced, along with other aspects of its business. That external HR department would still need to work closely with InnerSloth's core staff in order to hire any new, permanent team members, which would require time InnerSloth doesn't have.
The team has begun hosting its servers using Multiplay. It worked with developer PlayEveryWare to publish the Among Us Nintendo Switch port. It has joined forces with Dual Wield Studios to create its merchandise. Navigating all of these new business partnerships takes up a lot of time. While there are apparently a few new team members joining the company soon, InnerSloth needs space to adapt to the monumental changes Among Us' meteoric rise to fame has required before it can continue to grow.
Source: InnerSloth