Epic Games Under Fire Over Fortnite
Since it’s release, Fortnite has, without a doubt, become one of the biggest gaming sensations in recent memory. In fact, I can’t think of a bigger example since the whole ‘Flappy Bird’ fad and even then, I still think this is much, much, bigger.
A key factor in its success has been the regular content releases which have helped keep the game both fresh and entertaining. In a report via Eurogamer, however, that might be coming at a significant price to the staff.
In the report, it has been suggested that ‘crunch hours’ on Fortnite staff see them consistently working 70-100 hour work weeks.
Crunch Hours
Crunch hours isn’t a term unusual in the game development world. Put simply, it means working huge amounts of overtime to ensure that a particular project is delivered on time.
One Epic Games staff insider has, however, said that this is getting more than a little crazy.
If a build went out into the wild and there was a negative reaction, then someone at the top would say, ‘We need to change that’, and everyone would be pulled in from what they were doing, and people were told to cancel their plans, because they were going to crunch until this was done. It was never-ending. It’s great for supporting the community and for the public. But that comes at a cost.”
Rockstar Games
Such working condition are a factor that recently game into focus at Rockstar Games. Specifically, that staff were practically living out of the offices to ensure that Red Dead Redemption 2 was completed on time.
The criticism rose to a level that the developer had to announce that it would be putting an end to such practices. Albeit, it seems that such ‘policies’ haven’t extended to other companies such as Epic Games.
So, while they might be providing a fantastic bit of entertainment, it’s clearly coming at a significant human cost.
What do you think? How long is your work week? Do you think such demands are fair? – Let us know in the comments!
Luckily my weeks only go to about 50 hours. Got to say that from all I read, AAA game development is a nightmare job (I was a game dev many years ago, but indie and hardly did any crunch). Sure, you get to work on cool stuff, but hours are crazy, the stuff you do is junked more often than not, and in general it’s a very stressful job. I recently read at Kotaku about the Anthem development, and how a lot of the developers ended up on ‘stress leave’.