![]() And yet, nearly 15 years later, crunch culture is still alive and well in the industry. The post went viral, and EA was subsequently forced to settle at least two class action lawsuits, for a combined total of $30.5 million. ![]() The attitude at the company was “if they don’t like it, they can work someplace else.” to 10 p.m.-7 days a week-with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30 p.m.).” For these efforts, Hoffman’s husband received no overtime, no extra compensation, no vacation time, and no compensatory sick leave. She described her husband going from a “pre-crunch” schedule of working eight-hour days, six days a week, to a crunch-time schedule of working 12-hour days, six days a week, ultimately ramping up to mandatory shifts from “9 a.m. In a 2004 LiveJournal post, Erin Hoffman wrote about the realities of her husband’s job at game publisher Electronic Arts (EA). It’s not an exaggeration: Former XSEED Games localization manager and senior editor Jessica Chavez reportedly spent nine months in 2011 working 80-hour weeks-14 hours a day, six days a week-and dropped 10 percent of her body weight. During this time, sleep at work, limit bathroom breaks, and cut out anything that pulls their attention away from their screens, including family and even food.” Video-game journalist Jason Schreier describes this practice and others as hallmarks of “crunch culture,” which routinely expects employees to adjust to “a sudden spike in work hours, as many as 20 a day, that can last for days or weeks on end. In another industry, this mistreatment of employees would be unfair, but hopefully atypical in the gaming industry, they’re not only a regular occurrence, but exist within a culture that expects employees to work often unreasonable hours with no overtime compensation. As an industry, gaming maintains high levels of secrecy, which means voice actors often sign contracts without understanding what’s expected of them. (Telltale is fighting the lawsuit.) Game developers aren’t the only ones not getting their dues between October 2016 and September 2017, video-game voice actors went on strike for better pay, better working conditions, and more job security. Former employee Vernie Roberts brought a class-action lawsuit. Employees were reportedly given 30 minutes to exit the building, and within a few weeks, the remaining skeleton crew was also laid off. This trend of abrupt closures picked up in the latter half of 2018, when developer and publisher Telltale Games laid off 90 percent of its staff without severance, providing extended healthcare coverage for only nine days. Many of these individuals were contract workers, meaning they weren’t able to qualify for unemployment benefits. When gaming website Kotaku collected reader stories on industry layoffs in 2015, they heard from people who were fired at pizza parties who moved to expensive areas like San Francisco after being promised stable positions and were then abruptly let go and those who worked for several months without pay for companies that promised compensation once they made it through a financial downturn-and were then laid off. And the developer of popular franchise BioShock, Irrational Games, began laying off employees in large numbers in 2013, and in 2014 gave most of its 200-plus employees less than two hours’ notice before publicly announcing they were laying off all but 15 staff members. ![]() ![]() That same year, months after acquiring Lucas-film, Disney canceled all LucasArts projects and laid off 150 people. In 2013, video-game developer and publisher THQ went bankrupt, leaving hundreds of employees-who had been kept in the dark about the company’s financial problems-jobless. These issues aren’t just about consumers and fans-they’re reflected within the industry, which constantly devalues its employees by way of long hours and sudden mass layoffs that happen even when the industry is performing well.ĭespite booming profits, layoffs in the gaming industry are becoming more frequent, with less and less regard for their effects on employees. This article was published in Broke Issue #82 | Spring 2019 Subscribe »įrom bullying during online play to the frequency of sexual harassment and death threats exemplified during Gamergate, there is no shortage of problems in the gaming community.
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