Zatu denies toxic workplace allegations from former employees

Founded in 2016, Zatu Games claims to be “the largest independent board games company in the UK” right now. Zatu was, until recently, mainly an online store located at board-game.co.uk. Through that webstore and a physical outlet in Norwich, England, they stocked and sold board games, trading cards, miniatures, and other gaming-related products. Originally called Board Game Limited, the company has now expanded its multi-million pound business to include distribution for board games, shipping products to other stores in the UK and USA on behalf of various board game studios.

Zatu is owned by 47-year-old Simon Budd, who spent ten years in the financial sector before becoming an entrepreneur, according to a brief profile from 2016. Budd, along with his wife, began their entrepreneurship journey with a company called Lifeline24, which supplied “personal pendant alarms and keysafes for the disabled, frail and elderly, which are monitored from its UK-based emergency response call centres.” He sold the company in June 2022, according to Lifeline24's financial statements. In the same month, he started a company called Budd Holdings Limited and, per that company’s unaudited financial statements, transferred approximately £38 million into it. Since then, Zatu seems to be Budd's primary venture.

Despite this apparent success, former Zatu employees have lodged numerous complaints about the company’s work environment. Some of these claims had been posted on Reddit threads and reviews on sites such as Glassdoor and Indeed. This prompted the outlet BoardGameWire to interview David Budd, Simon Budd’s brother and the commercial director of Zatu. 

Over the last three months, Rascal spoke to half a dozen employees who previously worked at Zatu at various times over the last six years. While the employees all asked to remain anonymous to protect themselves from reprisal, Rascal has been able to corroborate certain complaints via discrete accounts from different employees. Their allegations include constant CCTV surveillance in the workplace, micromanagement, and verbal abuse from above. One former employee described it as an “extremely stressful, toxic environment” that exacerbated their mental illness and pushed them to seek therapy and medication. Speaking to Rascal over email, David Budd unequivocally denied these allegations.  

But the biggest and consistent complaints include a repeated cycle of mass firing at Christmas, non-warehouse employees allegedly asked to do shifts in the warehouse, and alleged overuse of apprentices.