A Petition Is up To Get the ‘Until Dawn’ Creators Credited in the Movie, and I’m With It

The Until Dawn movie is out and, surprise, surprise, people aren’t really feeling it. But that isn’t what we’re here for. A pretty important point is coming out of this movie and the games industry in general. Credit the devs. Former SIE narrative director Kim MacAskill noticed and pointed out that in the credits of the movie, “It simply said it was based on a Sony game.” And so, she started a petition to get Until Dawn‘s creators, Graham Reznick, Will Byles, and Larry Fessenden, credited in the movie.

‘Until dawn’ didn’t just come out of nowhere

Kim MacAskill is one hundred percent correct. The idea for the Until Dawn movie didn’t just come out of some studio head’s ass. There’s a classic video game out there that it pulled from. And there are people who created that game. Their hard work and creativity are the only reasons that the movie exists. So, what’s the issue with crediting the creators of the IP? It’s not that hard to get three more people’s names in a scrolling list of names. Why does it take someone on the outside to even take this action? As Kim herself said:

“When [an] author’s book is made into a movie, they aren’t concealed by the publisher. When TV writers have their show made into a movie, they aren’t concealed by their production house. The rules around game IP are dated and with transmedia being more popular than ever, the rules need [to be] updated – starting with the credit owed to [Until Dawn‘s creators] Will, Graham and Larry.”

Yes. A thousand times, yes. We call games art, so we need to treat them as such. When an artist creates something, their name should be on it wherever it may exist. And it’s not just talking about games to movies, but the games industry as a whole. Until Dawn‘s creators deserve better.

creators deserve better

It’s not just Until Dawn, either. We just went through this with MercurySteam not crediting a number of devs for their work on Metroid Dread. They chose not to due to a company policy that “developers must have worked on the title for at least 25% of its full development time to appear in the credits.” Which is BS. If you work on the game, you deserve credit. If Until Dawn was good enough to inspire a movie adaptation, its creators should be good enough to receive recognition. And even though she shouldn’t have had to do so, kudos to Kim for speaking up and doing something about it.