Composer claims she worked on God of War Ragnarok and was not credited

Santa Monica Studio is one of PlayStation’s largest studios, with a large team of employees. However, the company is being accused of not giving proper credit to one of the music producers of God of War Ragnarok.

The accusation was made by composer Jessica Mao, who worked as an intern in Santa Monica’s music and audio department from May to August 2021.

In a series of posts on Twitter, Mao explained that she contributed to the editing and arrangement of the music in the game’s opening scene, in which Freya chases Kratos and Atreus, and in the fight against Thor.

Check out an excerpt below:

i want to give a quick shoutout to Thor’s fight because that was a fun exercise in music arranging. the original mix was too fully orchestrated and had to be toned down to make room to grow in later phases. i made new stems using different combinations of the original stems…

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— jessica mao 🍂✨ (@jmaomusic) November 18, 2022

“I want to give a spotlight to the fight against Thor because it was a fun arrangement exercise. The original mix was orchestrated, so it had to be toned down to make room for [the music] to grow. I made new audio formats by using different combinations in ways that I felt worked best musically. The combination I’m most proud of is the one that removes the instruments and leaves only the percussion and vocals. You can hear it in this clip (underneath the combat sounds),” the tweet reads.

However, Mao claims that his name does not appear in the credits, nor can it be added by some future update.

The reason would be that in order to be credited, the contribution to the game would have to “meet minimum criteria,” which were not specified by Santa Monica for the composer.

“Unfortunately, my name is not in the credits and apparently cannot be added in a patch update. I was told that in order to be credited, my contribution to the game should meet some ‘minimum criteria’. […] I am still not sure what these criteria could be. This was very disappointing and disheartening for me, and I would hate for anyone else to have to go through this. Game developers, please give credit to EVERYONE who participates in the development of a game. It’s what makes sense,” Mao concluded on Twitter.

As of this writing, Santa Monica Studio has not officially commented on the case.

God of War Ragnarok está disponível para PlayStation 4 e PlayStation 5.