It's almost as if treating your employees poorly and mismanaging everything has negative consequences. That's just crazy talk though, right?

reportedly enforcing uncompensated overtime, allegedly trying to pay staff below minimum wage, and a toxic work environment cultivated by an alleged abusive leadership

nice work environment

Hardly surprising and it fits the scenario: a relatively small indie dev studio with only small-mid sized games under their belt with leadership deciding to buy into one of the most expensive IP available. Now, not only do they have a publisher looming over their work but are also under serious financial pressure to perform as well as expectation of a huge fan base plus promising a AAA sized game.

The leadership simply bit off far more than they could chew and panic set in, resulting in cut corners everywhere.

End result was a predictable disaster. Could have been avoided with smarter/better leadership. Clearly they didn't think much of their dev team.