{"id":9227,"date":"2026-06-20T16:08:37","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T16:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/20\/the-outer-worlds-2-studio-obsidian-accused-of-violating-state-wage-and-hour-laws-for-profit-in-california-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T16:08:37","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T16:08:37","slug":"the-outer-worlds-2-studio-obsidian-accused-of-violating-state-wage-and-hour-laws-for-profit-in-california-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/20\/the-outer-worlds-2-studio-obsidian-accused-of-violating-state-wage-and-hour-laws-for-profit-in-california-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Outer Worlds 2 studio Obsidian accused of &#8220;violating state wage and hour laws&#8221; for profit in California lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p>Obsidian Entertainment, developers of The Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed, have been sued in California for allegedly engaging &#8220;in a systematic pattern of wage and hour violations&#8221;. The case was initially filed in the Superior Court of Orange County by plaintiff Victoria Turner in the latter half of 2025, with Turner accusing Obsidian of &#8211; among other things &#8211; failure to pay minimum and overtime wage or provide lunch and rest breaks. Obsidian filed a response in March denying &#8220;each and every allegation&#8221; in Turner&#8217;s compaint and asking to have the case thrown out.<\/p>\n<p>As reported by GamesRadar, a Reddit user going by the handle Macken_zee claims to have stumbled across the case, which doesn&#8217;t appear to have been widely reported until now, while browsing Superior Court of Orange County&#8217;s records. You&#8217;ve got to pay to access case documents on the court&#8217;s site, but there is at least a freely available rundown of the case&#8217;s proceedings thus far.<\/p>\n<p>It cites Turner as having initially filed her complaint on September 10th, 2025, followed up by an amended complaint on January 12th this year. Obsidian responded in March; the most recent activity in the case was a payment of $1,435 the day after for an &#8220;answer or other 1st paper&#8221; and &#8220;complex case fee&#8221;. It&#8217;s not clear to my eye from the listing which side made that payment. A Victoria Turner is listed in The Outer Worlds 2&#8217;s credits as a QA lead.<\/p>\n<p>The casual legal doc browsers of Reddit have pulled Turner&#8217;s amended complaint and Obsidian&#8217;s response, uploading them to the Internet Archive. &#8220;Through this action, Plaintiff alleges that Defendants engaged in a systematic pattern of wage and hour violations under the California Labor Code and Industrial Welfare Commission (\u201cIWC\u201d) Wage Orders, all of which contribute to Defendants\u2019 deliberate unfair competition,&#8221; the former reads. Turner than accused Obsidian of the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Failing to pay all wages (including minimum wages and overtime wages);<\/li>\n<li>Failing to provide lawful meal periods or compensation in lieu thereof;<\/li>\n<li>Failing to authorize or permit lawful rest breaks or provide compensation in lieu thereof;<\/li>\n<li>Failing to reimburse necessary business-related costs;<\/li>\n<li>Failing to provide accurate itemized wage statements;<\/li>\n<li>Failing to pay wages timely during employment; and<\/li>\n<li>Failing to pay all wages due upon separation of employment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Obsidian denied &#8220;generally and specifically, each and every allegation&#8221; made by Turner in their March response, before rattling off 38 defenses and asking that the complaint be &#8220;dismissed in its entirety with prejudice&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve reached out to Obsidian for comment. <\/p>\n<p>With the March payment being the last thing listed on the court&#8217;s record, the current status of the proceedings isn&#8217;t totally clear from it. There aren&#8217;t any hearing dates listed, nor any obvious indication that the complaint has been dismissed. Obsidian may have bigger fish to fry right now: their parent company, Microsoft, have announced plans to &#8220;reset&#8221; their gaming business, with a number of studio closures potentially to follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Obsidian Entertainment, developers of The Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed, have been sued in California for allegedly engaging &#8220;in a systematic pattern of wage and hour violations&#8221;. The case was initially filed in the Superior Court of Orange County by plaintiff Victoria Turner in the latter half of 2025, with Turner accusing Obsidian of &#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6522,4960,7125,8652,4937,3828,3825,8653,4139,1212,8650,8651,3826],"class_list":{"0":"post-9227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pc-gaming","8":"tag-accused","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-hour","11":"tag-laws","12":"tag-lawsuit","13":"tag-obsidian","14":"tag-outer","15":"tag-profit","16":"tag-state","17":"tag-studio","18":"tag-violating","19":"tag-wage","20":"tag-worlds"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}