We’re back with another installment in our ‘Below Decks’ series, to give you a peek behind the scenes at Ghost Ship Games. This time we’re following Arvid, an intern at GSG, to learn about his work as the company’s official Loot Bug Keeper. Enjoy!
It’s a cold gray Monday in March, and Arvid’s feeding the loot bug.
If you’ve played Deep Rock Galactic, you know the loot bug: It’s the passive critter that populates the caves of Hoxxes, rooting around for chunks of gold and Nitra to gobble up. In the six years since DRG launched, the loot bug has become something of an in-joke among players, dividing the pacifist loot bug preservationists from those who see the creature as an easy source of extra resources.
But what most people don’t know is that the in-game loot bug is directly inspired by a real-life creature. It lives at the Ghost Ship office in Copenhagen, and it’s actually older than the game itself. Taking care of the creature is a full-time job, and it’s one of few positions at the studio not directly connected to game development.
This task is left to Arvid Aspeborg, an intern at Ghost Ship Games and the company’s newest Loot Bug Keeper.
Before joining Ghost Ship Games, Arvid spent a year as a student worker at the Skånes Djurpark zoo in Sweden, where he cleaned the bird enclosures. But he’d never worked directly with animals like he does now, especially one like this.
“I was a huge fan of Deep Rock Galactic before I started working here, so it kind of blew my mind that the loot bug from the game actually exists,” he says. “But it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting.”
Arvid enjoys a spirited interaction with the loot bug during the start of his shift.
Arvid’s day starts with a 4:30 AM alarm, so he can make it to the office and finish the loot bug’s morning care routine before anyone else arrives.
Most of this routine focuses on regular hygiene. The creature hates water, but a daily cleaning is necessary to prevent it from producing a sulfur smell that overpowers the office. Arvid uses an industrial pressure washer for this, but also has to use his hands to clean in between the creature’s folds.
“I wish they’d told me to bring gloves on my first day,” he laughs. “That was the only time I ever touched it with my bare skin, and I still can’t get the smell off. It felt like that hand was like, really sunburned for a long time after too.”
In real life, the loot bug is about the size of a child’s bean bag chair, and it weighs around 90 kilograms (330 pounds). Compared to the in-game depiction, the real creature is almost completely sedentary, which means that Arvid needs to reposition the creature throughout the day to prevent pressure ulcers from forming. As he points out, another big difference from the in-game version is the noise that it makes.
“I get why they gave the loot bug a different noise in Deep Rock Galactic, because it sounds totally weird in real life. That threw me off a lot when I started, because I couldn’t really place the noise. But after a few weeks, I realized it actually sounds a lot like a grown man weeping,” he says.
In the afternoon, Arvid engages the loot bug in a series of enrichment activities. Most often, this means reading aloud from The Lesser Key of Solomon, or playing recordings from recovered aircraft black boxes. Arvid typically leaves the office around 8 or 9 PM, though he’s technically on call around the clock via satellite radio, in case the loot bug causes another Contamination Incident.
Undated photograph of a creature similar to the loot bug under examination by researchers at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.
Phillip Mygind, co-founder of Ghost Ship Games, received the loot bug in 2016 as a gag present from his cousin, who worked on a fishing vessel in the North Sea. The cousin claimed to have dredged it up just offshore from the Barsebäck Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden.
Back then, the loot bug was just known as “Elefantfoden” (Danish for ‘The Elephant’s Foot’). Philip kept the creature in his garage for a few days, before his family insisted it had to go.
“I didn’t want it either, but I really couldn’t get rid of it. I tried driving it out into the countryside and leaving it there, but it was back in my house when I woke up the next morning. Same thing happened when I tried throwing it in the harbor,” he says. “It was a really difficult period. For all the time it lived in my house, my whole family would wake up feeling sick.”
At one point, Phillip got so tired of the creature that he tried having it euthanized with a captive bolt pistol, the type used to kill cattle at a slaughterhouse.
“It didn’t seem to do anything. The bolt just punched down through its skin and crunched into something, but it was like the loot bug didn’t even feel it. I’ll never forget the noise it made,” he says. “I expected it to bleed, but all that came out was this sort of milky mucus. I don’t know why, but I feel like it got some sort of pleasure from it. I hate it more than anything.”
Since then, the loot bug has been kept in an underground enclosure at the Ghost Ship offices. The company officially denies any knowledge of the creature’s history before it came into Phillip’s possession.
Illustration from the Dictionnaire Infernal (second edition, 1825) depicting a tribute to the deity Moloch.
Every two weeks, Ghost Ship Games receives an 80-liter plastic barrel from a hospital in Poland.
This is Arvid’s cue to take care of the loot bug’s bimonthly feeding. He considers this to be the most difficult part of his job. The drum contains around 65 kilograms of biomedical waste, mostly organic tissue from amputations and other surgeries.
Just like in Deep Rock Galactic, the loot bug is a scavenger, and eats directly off the ground. Unlike the game, however, the real-life loot bug sprays its food with corrosive enzymes that dissolve the meat proteins into a drinkable slurry. This aspect was omitted from the game due to content age rating concerns, and its diet was changed to mineral chunks instead.
“The first time I saw it eating, it made me throw up. Now when I have to feed it, I just dump the barrel out and leave the room as fast as I can. I wear earplugs too, so I can’t hear when it starts to eat,” Arvid says.
Once the creature finishes eating, it enters a hibernation-like state for several days. As Ghost Ship’s employees quickly learn, disturbing it in this condition isn’t a good idea.
“One time I tried entering the enclosure the day after it ate, just to check up on it, but it completely freaked out,” Arvid explains. “It let out this huge scream, like a man in pain but way deeper, and it just kept going. I remember the air started smelling like burnt electronics, and I could feel my lungs vibrating because it was so loud. After that, my nose kept bleeding for like a week. I’ve never experienced anything like it.”
The creature’s strong reaction in this state was actually the inspiration for the “It’s a Bug Thing” perk in Deep Rock Galactic.
Arvid (left) pours out a meal for the loot bug (right).
In Arvid’s own words, working as the loot bug keeper comes with its ups and downs.
“It’s cool to see all the memes and stuff about loot bugs, and to know I’m working with the actual creature that inspired all of it,” he says. “But being around it also makes me feel weird sometimes. I get headaches and nausea a lot, and lately I’ve been bruising more easily for some reason. I noticed some of my hair falls out when I shower too, but I guess that could be anything.”
With five months of experience, Arvid is the longest-lasting loot bug keeper in the company’s history. Ghost Ship Games has always had this position as an internship, and only ever hired Swedes for the job.
For Arvid, it’s been an exciting opportunity to start in the video game industry. Plus, he says, the nature of the role allows him to learn new skills, and share some fun jokes with the rest of the Ghost Ship Games team.
“I basically had to learn everything from scratch,” he says. “Ghost Ship didn’t tell me much about the job beforehand, and I’m not allowed to contact the other interns who used to do it. I once heard someone say that all of them left on sick leave, but that was probably just to mess with me.”
Are you Ghost Ship Games’ next loot bug keeper? Comment “ME NEXT” below so we can reach out in case something happens to Arvid. Thanks for reading!
