cruelty ultimately leads Weaver and his crew to agree with Lou's standpoint and push for industrial action, deliberately sabotaging the work in order to damage Lynx's profits. When Kaito threatens to deposit an overloading ship's reactor into a furnace, Rhodes deletes Kaito's EverWork profile, meaning he will not be reconstituted if he is killed, and threatens to go after the crew's families for their debts. The reactor explodes and destroys Kaito's salvage yard, much to the horror of both the crew and Rhodes, believing Kaito was killed in the blast; however, he is revealed to have survived, having lost contact due to a malfunction in his suit helmet's microphone. Since all communications during salvage shifts are recorded per Lynx policy, Weaver leaks Rhodes' tirades during the incident to the media, resulting in protests and a massive drop in Lynx's corporate stock. The Stellar Commission condemns Lynx's EverWork program as a human rights violation, and Lynx is forced to reimburse their workers for most of their debts and agree to recognize the workers' union. Rhodes is demoted back to his old job in salvage processing, Weaver retires and returns to Earth, Lou is rehired, and DeeDee becomes the temporary foreman. If the player has finished salvaging parts for the ship and is out of debt, they can choose to legally terminate their Lynx contract and leave Morrigan Station in the Beulah, setting out for Jupiter. Development and release Canadian studio Blackbird Interactive conceptualised the game in one of the Blackbird's internal game jam sessions after the studio completed the development of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak (2016). Initially named Hello, Collector, the game was about navigating procedurally generated asteroids using a grappling hook in order to collect loot. It was largely influenced by Gravity, but the team felt that the game slowly adopted a "cosmic horror" tone and that its gameplay was too slow. The game then evolved to become Falling Skies, which was an action game in which players need to grapple onto and sever objects falling onto the Earth. Hudson described this iteration of the game as "Fruit Ninja in space". The team liked the slicing mechanic, but they were not satisfied with the game's dramatic shift of tone, and they worried that the game would be too generic. As the development progressed, the team was inspired by the beach of Alang in India, where hundreds of workers were working