A videogame designer who was made redundant following the closure of a Guildford studio has spoken out against the difficult working conditions during the studio’s final months.

Semi Essessi, 28, had been a programmer at Codemasters for 13 months before its closure in November 2011 which affected over 70 employees at the company. Mr Essessi has now gone online to air his grievances with his former employer via his online blog.

Amongst the tough conditions he claims to have endured were excessively long working days, which he asserts were contrary to the European law governing the number of hours one is meant to work in a given week. He also says he put in over 400 hours of unpaid overtime.

“In the last few weeks it was more a case of staying until midnight than staying until 9pm”, said Mr Essessi, “and working seven days rather than six. There were very few occasions when everyone had left the office by 6pm ever.”

Mr Essessi has used his personal blog to detail in full the time leading up to the closure of the Guildford studio, including the busy ‘crunch’ period prior to the release of their final game, Bodycount. It was during this time at the firm which Mr Essessi claims to have accrued the overtime.

“When I received my final pay from Codemasters I was a pretty happy man”, Mr Essessi explains on his blog. “I had received a pretty substantial extra sum – it wasn’t quite the amount of money I was owed for unpaid overtime, but it was something.

“I received a voicemail and e-mail explaining that there had been a mistake and I had accidentally been paid an extra month’s salary! What’s more (and this is on 15 December) I had until 20 December to return the money.”

Mr Essessi says he incurred substantial debt relocating to the Guildford area for his job and spent the money securing his financial situation. He states that he fully intends to repay the money and he is currently in negotiation with Codemasters to arrange a reasonable timeframe in which to do so.

In response to statements made by Mr Essessi, a representative of Codemasters said: “The company has been, and continues to be, in dialogue with Semi regarding the reimbursement of funds paid into his account following an administrative error, as it is entitled to.

“The company’s advisors are now aware of the additional comments that Semi has published and these will be addressed with him directly through the appropriate channels as necessary.”

The future of the studio came into question following the critical and commercial under-performance of Codemasters’ final game, Bodycount, which was released in September only a few weeks before the eventual decision was made to close the Guildford office.