![]() ![]() Studio managers have realised that EA-Spouse-type situations mean bad PR, so soft pressure is widely taking the place of mandatory overtime. Work late, come home for a few hours of food and exhausted conversation, go to bed, sleep in between stressing about bugs and end up dreaming about code, get up feeling half dead then go back into work and repeat.” My generally much higher level of stress takes its toll on my mood outside work so it bleeds into everything. “This year is my first experience with long stretches of crunch, and my girlfriend, who I live with, feels like she hardly sees me,” relates one programmer at a leading games studio who, like almost everyone else we spoke to, asks to remain anonymous. ![]() Furthermore, current and former industry workers interviewed for this feature revealed deep dissatisfaction with crunch and a sense that, even if it’s not as acute as it was a decade ago, it’s still worse than they can tolerate. Despite the drop in intensity, the industry baseline is that only one-fifth of industry workers don’t crunch at all, and nearly two-fifths still crunch more than 50 hours a week. “Also, 38% of the 2014 respondents reported typical crunch times of 50-69 hours per week compared to 35% of 2004 respondents reporting crunch times of 65-80 hours per week.”īut the take from Edwards is of the glass-half-full variety. “Over the last decade, the average amount of crunch time worked has dropped, with 19% of 2014 respondents indicating they haven’t crunched in at least two years compared to 2.4% of 2004 respondents,” says Kate Edwards, the IGDA’s executive director. Its latest numbers from the 2014 report show a decline in intensity. In 2004, the IGDA – the only large organisation advocating for labour rights in the US games industry – started a regular “quality of life” survey in response to the EA controversy, polling staff on working standards and practices. The settlement in the second case featured a quid pro quo: employees would be reclassified in order to get overtime but would give up their stock options.įor industry insiders, the lid was supposed to be off if one employee could speak openly about labour issues (Hoffman herself worked in the industry at the time), then surely everyone could? And if that happened, the problem would surely go away? Work late, come home, sleep in between stressing about bugs and end up dreaming about code, go back into work and repeat Anonymous programmer Endless crunchīut, a decade after EA Spouse, it’s questionable how much has actually changed. ![]() In both cases, EA relied on vagaries of American law that classify some IT professionals as exempt from overtime pay. A second suit followed in 2006, this time settling for $14.9m. A class action suit, filed against EA for failure to pay overtime to its employees, was eventually settled for $15.6m (£10m). Thanks to EA Spouse, however, it looked like change was coming – and, as usual, it would begin with a court case. Game development surveys conducted by the International Game Developers Association in 2004 showed that only 2.4% of respondents worked in no-crunch environments and 46.8% received no compensation for their overtime. Very quickly it became clear that the most shocking thing about the EA Spouse story was that, within the industry, it wasn’t shocking at all. The article went viral, spreading across forums and news sites, and provoking a wave of controversy and condemnation. For many gamers, the EA Spouse web post, as it was known at the time (Hoffman had to remain anonymous to protect her husband’s job) offered a first glimpse into the video game industry’s secret world of “crunch” – vast periods of mandatory, but often unpaid, overtime that would often kick in during the months leading to a release date. ![]()
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