NetherRealm (Mortal Kombat 11, Injustice) also has a culture of crunch

[Orbit]

Wonder what Ed Boon has to say about this

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Better get the question to him quick. According to the guy from the first series of tweets, Ed Boon and other senior level staff would leave at 5 while others were left crunching. So disgusting. Crunch itself it terrible but to be the head and face of a ship and you don't even stay with the rest of the crew as they try to steer it.

 

[coldcrush]

mentioned this in the Fortnite crunch thread but from my experience and my friends at other studios on some of the more well know games,, there are very few studios that don't have this kind of crunch culture. I am sure they exist but it is more the exception than the rule. Crunch is industry wide problem

 

[XaviConcept]

Unionizing would have to help. I would gather that in turn we consumers would need to pay more. Let's face it though, inflation hasn't hit the gaming industry like it has for other products. At least we would also know our $ is going to support a better working environment.

Also, can someone explain to me why these reports tend to surface around the release of AAA games?

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When your abuser is on the news for how awesome and successful they are, it tends to hit a nerve

 

[VN1X]

Like, I am okay with games taking an extra year to come out if it means devs don't have to deal with this shit.

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We are.

Investors on the other hand...

 

[Jakisthe]

A union would say that if you work overtime you're paid double. Or if you're salary that you get set premiums for extended crunch time. That if you work a certain number of days in a row your get an unquestionable amount off no matter what. That if your employee work crunch you have to pay for stress leave/counselling/etc.

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Hmm. That makes sense then. Well, as much as the concept can without going into what I'm sure is the reams of research on stuff, but still, makes sense. The KPI miss still looms in my head when I think about unions, but I guess it's kinda hard to say what specific protections would be.

 

[molnizzle]

You're talking about Geoff Keighley, right? Maybe I'm mis-remembering but doesn't he mainly do fluff pieces? I don't think he'd want to do interviews where he pressures top people about working conditions.

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He was talking about Gerstmann, who doesn't give a fuck and will make guests uncomfortable. Like when he asked Phil Spencer "What is gonna take to stop shipping games in a semi-broken state?" following the release of Halo MCC.

 

[Minky]

The industry in its current state is not sustainable. Every instance of this vile practice of chewing up and spitting out of contractors, plus these insane cultures of fear and employee intimidation, need to be fucking cracked down on hard and shamed like this. Very loudly and very fucking publicly. Because all studios crunch in some capacity no matter how much they dress it up, it's endemic. Even at places where overtime is compensated or optional, the sheer time pressure and poor management of a triple-A dev cycle is enough to push people to their limit. I've seen people have complete mental breakdowns and get put out of action for literally months because of this.

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

Unions need to fucking happen and they needed to happen yesterday. Good fucking lord this is inhumane. It's disgusting.

 

[wubalubadubdub]

I'm going to tell you guys a secret...every single development studio in this industry has a culture of crunch.

 

[jett]

Big changes need to come to this whole industry.

 

[Azusa]

If you dont have culture of crunch then you will lose to other studio that embrace crunch.

 

[Lowrys]

Krunch

 

[Deleted member 51539]

I believe you mean a Kulture of Krunch.

Krunch

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DAMN YOU

 

[Lowrys]

The industry in its current state is not sustainable. Every instance of this vile practice of chewing up and spitting out of contractors, plus these insane cultures of fear and employee intimidation, need to be fucking cracked down on hard and shamed like this. Very loudly and very fucking publicly. Because all studios crunch in some capacity no matter how much they dress it up, it's endemic. Even at places where overtime is compensated or optional, the sheer time pressure and poor management of a triple-A dev cycle is enough to push people to their limit. I've seen people have complete mental breakdowns and get put out of action for literally months because of this.

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Great post.

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

I get the impression that video game work culture and just industry in general is very immature. It just seems like a lot of these companies are stuck in start-up mode where everyone is just kind of riffing and HR is either non-existent or not a threat, etc...

There seems to be zero fear of running an office a certain way.

 

[headspawn]

When has the "top" ever willingly changed? We needed laws to step in and tell companies to stop working children to death in factories.

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I meant from a government level. I certainly wouldn't expect the leaders directly involved in this to make those changes without scrutiny or the above.

 

[Psamtik]

The hours sound like working for the Postal Service in November and December, except we get paid extremely well to put in all that overtime. Unions make the difference.

 

[BobsReset]

The industry in its current state is not sustainable. Every instance of this vile practice of chewing up and spitting out of contractors, plus these insane cultures of fear and employee intimidation, need to be fucking cracked down on hard and shamed like this. Very loudly and very fucking publicly. Because all studios crunch in some capacity no matter how much they dress it up, it's endemic. Even at places where overtime is compensated or optional, the sheer time pressure and poor management of a triple-A dev cycle is enough to push people to their limit. I've seen people have complete mental breakdowns and get put out of action for literally months because of this.

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It's not sustainable for the developers but the managers make the money and choose to use contractors because they can get a new batch in to replace the ones who are burnt out

This is why this needs to be legislated by law in some way.

The people saying 'people want companies to crunch for quick updates' or 'surprise suprised... crunch has always existed' are missing the point - crunch doesn't need to happen, you can get a quick release cadence by having teams that stack... but that would cost the companies more money.

A history of crunch is also no excuse. This really needs to change for the sake of people who want to be developers in the future

 

[Mzen]

I don't think AAA gaming will last very long if they keep this up.

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Yeah... I don't think that's quite right. Keep in mind that Era is a small vocal minority, most of their target audience has no idea about the ins and outs of the game industry, and even if they did, most wouldn't give two craps about it.

But as for myself, between the pure greed that is going on with the F2P mechanics in the game and now this, I am completely soured on MK11. And this is as someone who has been a huge fan ever since Ultimate MK3 came out.

I see stuff like SNK resurrecting like a phoenix and bringing beloved but almost forgotten classics like Samurai Shodown, which is looking cooler by the minute, and I keep wondering why I should be spending any money on this grind fest of a game, which doesn't respect neither its fans nor its developers.

 

[YuriLowell]

Oh right, they lack either the ability or the decency to keep a large long term staff.

Still, why not hire more contractors at crunch?

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Because hiring more people doesn't mean the job gets done faster.

 

[Rendering...]

This is deeply messed up and it needs to change.

 

[Daniel Westlake]

Yeah this is messed up. I thought the idea was to bring in young members and develop them into longstaying studio employees? This profit over everything mentality is destroying how people value each other. People shouldn't be looked at as cattle

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The thing is it works for them. And it's been working for them for years. Even with this the conversation probably isn't going to last so there's no real benefit to them to change how they operate.

 

[Mathieran]

There are so many good games out there that most people cannot keep up with them all to the point where we have massive backlogs that we never finish.

We need to signal to developers that crunch is not okay, and we can wait for your game to come out.

 

[The Adder]

Because hiring more people doesn't mean the job gets done faster.

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Hiring more people means the workload gets spread and you're not paying overtime hours.

But that's if you're in a situation like Nintendo with a large stable core of in house devs that are supplemented by contract workers.

 

[Snake Eater]

I assume it's been the same culture for MKX and MK11

 

[YuriLowell]

Hiring more people means the workload gets spread and you're not paying overtime hours.

But that's if you're in a situation like Nintendo with a large stable core of in house devs that are supplemented by contract workers.

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No, not really. It takes time to get people up to speed on what's going on which takes away from the task at hand. You can spread the load but the work might not be done correctly.
This is the mythical man month.

 

[Daniel Westlake]

I think a lot of entertainment industries and companies probably take advantage of this. Kids grow up dreaming of working in music or movies or games and it becomes easy to exploit that.

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Absolutely. Any decently creative industry ends up with companies weaponizing idealistic young people's dreams against them and then just grabbing the next crop in those are burned up.

 

[Dan L]

Jesus this is really disheartening to read, crunch is the worst, being a developer for 10+ years it's crazy the amount it exists in all industries. These days I make sure my programmers never work past their typical 8-445 hours. (unless they request to rarely this happens especially if they want to take some time of in lieu)

fuck netherrealms, the crunch shit is so bad already but then the treatment of women makes it even worse. fuck them.

 

[XaviConcept]

Hiring more people means the workload gets spread and you're not paying overtime hours.

But that's if you're in a situation like Nintendo with a large stable core of in house devs that are supplemented by contract workers.

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Not really, maybe in a Sim game. In our industry it can go both ways. If you have bad managers (which NR has) it will just make the situation worse. I wrote a post in the last page or so that explains it in a bit more detail

 

[ody]

wow
this sht is awful wtf

 

[-PXG-]

Unionizing would have to help. I would gather that in turn we consumers would need to pay more. Let's face it though, inflation hasn't hit the gaming industry like it has for other products. At least we would also know our $ is going to support a better working environment.

Also, can someone explain to me why these reports tend to surface around the release of AAA games?

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Hell no. How about their employers stop being assholes and pay their workers fair wages and establish reasonable work hours, period? The onus and burden shouldn't be on us. Watch them just charge more for the hell of it and still maintain awful working conditions.

But let's be honest. Unless devs go on strike and basically don't show up to work on en masse, nothing will change. At the end of the day, video games are an entertainment and fan driven enterprise. No one outside that bubble gives a shit because video games have no intrinsic value beyond the profits they produce. Games aren't food, land or a natural resource.

 

[Stoze]

That's really fucking disappointing, especially hearing that it's the only major studio to work at in Chicago so that's how people get roped into it.

Get your shit together NRS.

 

[XaviConcept]

I would gather that in turn we consumers would need to pay more

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You should look at the bonuses videogame execs get paid and then get back to me on that :P

 

[Shadoken]

So all the studios we know have a culture of crunch.

Bioware
Epic
Rockstar
CD Projekt Red
Nether realm

Who am i missing?

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Majority of studios have crunch. But theres varying degrees.

I work in the industry and speaking to a few of my co-workers. Some studios do crunch right before the game launches but do offer pretty big bonuses and 1-2 months paid vacation. Some don't offer these and lead employees on false promises like "You get to put 'x' game on your resume" and say shit like you get large bonuses if the game does well. The catch here is that its all based on your "Performance" and guess what you need to do to get a Good performance. Thats where those 100 hour work weeks come in.

There are many newer studios ( mostly mobile ) that dont do crunch. But in the AAA industry ? That shit is there 90% of the time.

 

[Mikebison]

$12 an hour. But $11 per hour if you're a woman. That's fucking grim.

 

[Complicated]

Hours worked aside this sounds like a parody of someone arriving at a concentration camp or somet

So all the studios we know have a culture of crunch.

Bioware
Epic
Rockstar
CD Projekt Red
Nether realm

Who am i missing?

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Naughty Dog
Sony Santa Monica
Id software
Bungie
Irrational back in the Bioshock days

343 on previous halo games which is part of why Infinite has been given more time

Probably the vast vast majority of Japanese
developers

Those are just off the top of my head though.

 

[illamap]

I know unions are solution to all problems here, but you have to wonder if many studios would go bankrupt because of it, sure epic would have no problems paying for double for any overtime like unions typically demand, but for many others I have no idea honestly especially for many Japanese developers since their games sell like couple million at most, but games are still high-quality so margins of profit must be pretty thin. Another point is that there isn't really a whole lot of demand for junior artists in west anymore due to outsourcing of art assets, so maybe going to a crunch heavy studio maybe your best chance of getting experience in the industry to move more towards senior art positions. Otherwise you would be just unemployed since I feel demand for junior artists is really low to begin with in west.

 

[koutoru]

To throw my own hat in the ring here, I was a temporary engineer at NetherRealm for 9 months. I personally didn't experience any mistreatment or pressure to stay overtime (in fact my manager insisted on me on not staying over 40 hrs ).

However I can agree that temps (even on the engineer side) are underpaid (same $12/hr as everyone else) and are sort of looked at in a disposable manner. For me it was a good place to start at (I'm now at a larger studio doing full time work) but besides Iron Galaxy and Wargaming there isn't really many other options in terms of big game studios to work at in the Chicago area so I can see how they are looked at sort of a revolving door of sorts in terms of employment since so many people apply there.

 

[SoulShimmer]

Reading shit like this... man. I don't think I could ever go back to the private sector.

 

[Wolfgunblood]

Wonder what Ed Boon has to say about this

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We won't rest until it's right. We didn't rest for the months leading up to release, but apparently it was still too much because we didn't get it right before it went gold. Now we owe it to the fans to not rest some more.

 

[Teamocil]

Damn $12 dolllars an hour what's the minimum wage in Illinois?

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Lol Illinois is a comparatively cheap place to live when you're used to CA cost of living.

 

[Vire]

12 dollars an hour is insulting. Downright pathetic.

Very sad to see this is so prevalent across the entire industry. Makes me feel guilty for enjoying these products.

Can only wonder what is going on at Last of Us 2 HQ right now.

 

[Delriach]

I've talked about some of this on here but if anyone wants info hit me up

 

[danhz]

something has to be done, and people have to actually understand that the games they are playing, are done in this conditions

 

[Jakisthe]

You should look at the bonuses videogame execs get paid and then get back to me on that :P

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Bonuses are a poor stand-in for wages. Decreasing bonuses does not necessarily mean that wages for other strata of employees goes up.

 

[LiK]

Wrong thread

 

[Pyro]

Fucking. Unionize.

 

[Griffmo]

You should look at the bonuses videogame execs get paid and then get back to me on that :P

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If unions became a thing, it would cost developers/publishers more to offer a more ethical and fair work environment. Sure it would be nice for the "higher ups" to forfeit some of their profit to cover that, but Id guess it's more realistic they would pass the cost to us.
I'd be willing to pay more for AAA games if I knew I was contributing to that.

 

[LudicrousSpeed]

I know unions are solution to all problems here, but you have to wonder if many studios would go bankrupt because of it, sure epic would have no problems paying for double for any overtime like unions typically demand, but for many others I have no idea honestly especially for many Japanese developers since their games sell like couple million at most, but games are still high-quality so margins of profit must be pretty thin. Another point is that there isn't really a whole lot of demand for junior artists in west anymore due to outsourcing of art assets, so maybe going to a crunch heavy studio maybe your best chance of getting experience in the industry to move more towards senior art positions. Otherwise you would be just unemployed since I feel demand for junior artists is really low to begin with in west.

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I'd honestly call bullshit on this bankrupting studios, but, honestly, there's no need.

Let's pretend you're right, and having to pay their developers fairly and offer humane working conditions that don't cause developers to face physical and mental health problems causes game companies to go bankrupt. If that's the case, then they should go bankrupt. Video games are not important enough that society should excuse abusive and exploitative working conditions in order to produce them.

 

[Cooking]

Jesus I got paid more than twice that amount to answer tech support calls.

I don't see a way to effectively fight this as a consumer, which is frustrating. gaming needs unionization and I would be happy not supporting any developers that don't recognize employee unions -but cutting out any devs that crunch at this point is basically quitting gaming.