The Omori Omocat Situation Is Insane

Over the last 24 hours there's been a crazy discourse surrounding the game omori between its creator omocat and one of their previous developers melon. With every passing day there seems to be more and more info being released around it, which i'm gonna cover in this video. Keep in mind that there's a lot of gaps and missing evidence for quite a lot of the accusations i'll be discussing, so take everything with a grain of salt.
This all initially kicked off with a thread from Melon talking about their grievances working on omori, they said:
ill just air out my grievances now i don't feel like carrying this anymore, i joined the omori team in 2019, i remember being invested in production right away because getting paid to do dev work on a game i like is basically my dream
They then go on to detail about how they went pretty crazy working on it doing 12-18 hours shifts and wouldn't mess around on the clock at all. People would leave for the day and come back to find them still working, somehow managing to keep this up for half a year until their friend tried to pull them back from it.

#omori #omocat

[VaYgrMakkaan]

cant people just resolve their shit in private nowadays?
(Opinion from 7 months ago i do not stand by it anymore but I don't want to bother watching this again)

[hoodmaster]

Their recent rants on Twitter/X just made it sound like they were just complaining about having a normal job

[joeypickering]

so let me get this, melon.

YOU PURPOSELY OVERWORKED YOURSELF THEN BLAMED OMO SINCE YOU GOT SICK BECAUSE OF YOUR O W N ACTIONS?

[SASQUATCHPRIEST]

I mean, seems like a pretty open and shut case in Omocat's favor. I mean is she supposed to baby Melon, hold her hand and feed her soup while she's sick, give Melon royalties to her game for the sheer sake of being nice? It's on Melon to make sure all that stuff's in order.
I was a no-call no-show for a few days at a job and got fired once. Should I have wrote a tweet cancelling my shift supervisor? lol.

[littlecake]

Dunno omocat seems pretty reasonable in this one? I mean you can say as much as you want about guilt tripping and other stuff, but overall: You overworked yourself, didn't provide medical note or anything i suppose to even proof you felt awful, and wasn't working basically for a few months. She's still your boss not a friend.
Idk maybe I'm missing something.

[francyisanidot]

I might be attacked by saying this but hear me out, Melon kid is saying half truth and half lie, it's truth that the team worked really hard on omori but Omocat asked to Melon kid a break and they reject it for weird reasons and from what i saw many artists and animators from the omori team said that Melon kid wasen't a great person, blamming Omocat or not Melon kid is most likely telling lies

Edit: still don't know how tf this comment got so many likes

[BloodySkullx]

Both sides seems to have made mistakes when it comes to working together. Omocat like they stated never should have let Melon get to a point of over work that they were crashing and getting sick, that's just bad management. But Melon had a responsibility to figure out what to do once they did fall sick, you can't just work when you feel better when you have deadlines to keep. If you stopped doing the majority of the work (Albeit for a good reason that needed to be handled) then you're not going to be as deserving as the others who do more work then you do.

And the whole contract situation was badly handled when Omo decided to ask the other employees about the royalties when they had no reason to be included at all in that decision. But Melon also forgoes said royalties.

Honestly the whole thing just seems like a employee with regrets and resentment and a manager who maybe wasn't the best but not the worst off here, other employees have spoken out against Melon's conduct as well and in my opinion everyone is responsible for something. This should have been held in private and honestly just makes Melon look like they're out to hurt Omocat for something that they handled poorly.

[kanamafu]

twitter is terrfying
looked at the responses for melon and...cachi, I think? where cachi was standing up for omocat
the responses were brutal, I think i even saw a death threat or two

[Fortune-III-Book]

melon kinda needs to grow up, omocat did offer them breaks but they didnt listen and now are blaming it on omo..

[SinisterMeows]

"Can't work, I 'eepy uwu"
Should omocat have put their foot down? Maybe. If you said that to your boss in any other job, they wouldn't care and just fire you, especially after refusing to get a doctor's note.

[Controldropper]

Omo really doesn’t deserve this.

The game they all made is just amazing. Heart shattering. I really don’t wanna see all of it crumble😢😭

[thechazz]

Wow melon kid needs to just be a melon adult.
It turns out they just wanted to work extra for no reason, for some reason went to some extent and then burned themselves out
I have no idea how that happens

[trixxsaurus]

maybe this is gonna make me sound like a jerk, but, yeah, if I was an employer and one of my employees overworked themselves to the point that they literally got sick even though I never at any point asked them to do that, then later they stopped working entirely because they got burnt out, I think I would get a little frustrated?? Idk. Especially if Omocat is telling the truth that they *told them* to take breaks and Melon straightup didn't, yeah I'd be mad that they just start missing deadlines on this thing a massive amount of people are funding to get done

[ArtsyRose]

I relate to Omocat on her not wanting to put her foot down on one of her workers because if I had someone like Melon working on my web series, I would have definitely choose not to let them off sooner then I should cause I wouldn´t want to ruin someone´s hardworking enthusiasm either though I also would advise them to at least take a break.

[sinnombre]

i dont get why people nowdays have the urge to put everything that happen in their lifes in the internet. this is so stupid, omo wasnt a good leader, but she was not and asshole, and it seems like the person who made the post is not telling all the true, just the convinient parts. this things happen, and they can e resolved privatly. the girl knew that posting it would make people hate omo.

[milenartmeire]

Those are some weird accusations. While OMOCAT did make some management mistakes, some of the things Melon accused them for are actually pretty normal job stuff. You wont earn more of you're faster than others and such, you're just doing your job, y'know, if you overworked and were paid for it, that's on you. And it's totally fair for the employer to ask for a doctor's note if you're calling off sick, this is literally normal job procedure. And if you have a deadline, even if you're sick, you have to at least provide some reparation(idk, if its the right word, english is not my first language), what I'm saying is that they should have come out clean from the start and stated the deadline couldnt be achieved. Idk, from the tweets it looked like this person was a pain to work with...principally by belittling their coleagues' work

[gibbons]

Never hire anyone to help work on a game without a THOROUGH background check and a solid contract. A huge chunk of people in this industry are absolutely insane.

[amisharme]

People, please, REMEMBER TO COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER.
I wouldn't be surprised if Omocat DID do some nasty stuff, but that would obviously be a result of the 6-7 years of working on a game nonstop. It doesn't excuse her actions, but she at least came clean and responded to this whole mess.
It feels like Melon is blowing this up a bit, more than they need to.
Yes, it would've been better if Omo had talked with Melon, but what indication did they give that they even WANTED to be talked to? Melon has a right to be mad, but instead of just spitting out shit, they should've genuinely talked to Omo.
I understand it's hard to talk to someone that you left on a bad note with, but you should learn to build up the courage to do that.

[otwlohs]

Call me having trust issue or something but this is the main reason why I adore solo dev and if I wanted to make an indie game I would rather have it solo than ever so reliant needing to work with other people.

[elfrangofrito]

I feel like Melon Kid has a case to make that she was disrespected in the workplace, but she's blowing the situation way out of proportion. Based on what this video showed, I can't really say I think she's a reliable source.