It's a shame to see how the mighty have fallen. Sonic the Hedgehog was once a spiky blue god in the video game mascot pantheon, but now he's been reduced to garbage like "Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric." The Wii U game, released around a week ago, was almost immediately found to be full of game-breaking bugs and glitches, and universally panned by both critics and players. It seems as though many of the team at Big Red Button Entertainment, "Rise of Lyric's" developer, also knew that this title was awful...as a good many of them decided to leave the company before the game was released.

A good deal of this puzzle was put together by Tssznews. By examining LinkedIn profiles for the development team, the site discovered that a large number of Big Red Button Entertainment staff decided to leave the company approximately six months before the game was released. This includes people like Justin Leader, the producer and project manager for "Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric," as well as other designers and artists who worked on the game.

It should be stressed that the staff departures were voluntary, and there appears to be no bad blood between the ex-staffers and the company. While it is not etched in stone that these people left because of "Rise of Lyric," the fact that many decided to leave right around the same time as the horrible game was being created seems like a bit more than a coincidence to this reporter.