-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
USgamer: "This Is How They Get Away With It:" Former NetherRealm Studios Contract Devs Reveal a Troubling Studio Culture
- Thread starter Kenzodielocke
- Start date
I am too.
But I REALLY hope Gamers don't think the takeaway is "NRS are the badguys" and then go back to playing Fortnite/GTA/Call of Duty with oblivious blinders on.
Please also keep in mind that if you hire hundreds of people it can't go smoothly for everyone.
There are hundreds of people there working their hardest, just like for Rockstar, Quantic Dreams etc... you can't just say "fuck NRS" and fuck everybody over because you get the version of people that didn't get hired and reportedly the higher ups are assholes.
That's an industry wide issue (with VERY LITTLE exceptions) so I hope the industry actually changes, instead of articles releasing right on time at the release of a hot game while that shit has been going on for years.
That cycle has become rather obnoxious. If you have info, share it, don't sit on it to get clicks when the studio is being talked about.
It's like "villain of the week" lately when that crap affects so many people.
Has there been news regarding unionization of devs ?
There are hundreds of people there working their hardest, just like for Rockstar, Quantic Dreams etc... you can't just say "fuck NRS" and fuck everybody over because you get the version of people that didn't get hired and reportedly the higher ups are assholes.
That's an industry wide issue (with VERY LITTLE exceptions) so I hope the industry actually changes, instead of articles releasing right on time at the release of a hot game while that shit has been going on for years.
That cycle has become rather obnoxious. If you have info, share it, don't sit on it to get clicks when the studio is being talked about.
It's like "villain of the week" lately when that crap affects so many people.
Has there been news regarding unionization of devs ?
Not just the industry but corporate America as a whole. Most of the manufacturing industry uses similar tactics via temp agencies for example. At least the ones that still operate in America.
The retail industry takes advantage of rural communities full of people desperate for any work/pay while spouting rhetoric against unionization. Then they proceed to play fast and easy with the scheduling so part timers are working 40+ hours a week with no overtime or benefits.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not buying mk11 now. However I'm sure most of my games were made in similar enviroments.
Not excusing their treatment, but Chicago's cost of living is astronomically low compared to areas where other AAA studios are located.
That's exactly what I plan on doing. Video games aren't essential to my existence. They're just a quick shallow hobby I indulge in every now and then. I don't need it and wont support this bullshit.
I was looking forward to trying out MK11, but after hearing this I won't go near it. Same for for any and all games made off the broken backs of abused workers. I hope these poor people finally unite and unionize.
I can all but guarantee every game at EVO has similar development, including Street Fighter. Physical and mental wellness is not a priority when making games.
This is an industry-wide problem, not a specific-developer problem.
If this place really cares, make a stickied thread that calls out all of the companies that practice this shit and continually add to it over time. @shinobi
Given how they mention several times in the article how no one was hired, like:
"People never get hired," another said bluntly.
"Spoilers: none of us got hired immediately after our contracts were up."
Their idea made it in, but they never got that full-time position they were chasing."
even over the issue of the low pay, makes me think lots of them accepted the low wage because in exchange they held the hope that job would be be their stepping stone, their entry to the AAA industry. They were taken as fools. I'm sorry to say, but maybe they let be taken as fools.
Never accept a shitty job with some nebulous hope that you are going to be chosen from hundreds contractor to be hired permanently.
"People never get hired," another said bluntly.
"Spoilers: none of us got hired immediately after our contracts were up."
Their idea made it in, but they never got that full-time position they were chasing."
even over the issue of the low pay, makes me think lots of them accepted the low wage because in exchange they held the hope that job would be be their stepping stone, their entry to the AAA industry. They were taken as fools. I'm sorry to say, but maybe they let be taken as fools.
Never accept a shitty job with some nebulous hope that you are going to be chosen from hundreds contractor to be hired permanently.
To all the people suggesting, "Every company does it and you are basically never buying a game" and "Unionization won't work", what's your suggestion? Accept it and let it go?
My suggestion is to keenly aware of it and apply pressure on social media. Call the Publisher out each and every time. The live on Hype Culture, so if they are pulling this shit, keep on reminding people this is how they operate. If you want to boycott, go for it. You have principles and I respect that. If you don't, cool you are human and it's normal... but keep the pressure. Make your purchase be a jagged pill they have to swallow. Let the media knows these are stories you want to read and they should cover.
Silence and accepting is not an answer at all. It's reductive, dismissive, and I am not cool with people suggesting this is futile. Even if it's a losing battle, fuck it.. I am still in.
My suggestion is to keenly aware of it and apply pressure on social media. Call the Publisher out each and every time. The live on Hype Culture, so if they are pulling this shit, keep on reminding people this is how they operate. If you want to boycott, go for it. You have principles and I respect that. If you don't, cool you are human and it's normal... but keep the pressure. Make your purchase be a jagged pill they have to swallow. Let the media knows these are stories you want to read and they should cover.
Silence and accepting is not an answer at all. It's reductive, dismissive, and I am not cool with people suggesting this is futile. Even if it's a losing battle, fuck it.. I am still in.
Last edited:
I made 11$/h working the night shift at walmart more than 10 years ago. This is a stupid low wage for working on a AAA game. What's next? 10$/h but u also get exposure!!!!!!
When will people realize that this is the mostly the publisher's fault? They are the ones funding and setting dates/deadlines.
Last edited:
Then thy ship subcontracting to other countries. This is globalization: those who can get the most out of workers for the least renumeration get the contracts. It is funny that some people only notice this when it starts affecting white-collar types.
For the amount of work they do $12 is still poor even for Chicago. They really do got them by the balls.
The lack of local competition for video game jobs makes it easier to act certain ways. Where else are folks going to go?
Crunch on RDR3 has apparently already begun.
RockStar Games Begins Imprisoning Programmers For 'Red Dead Redemption 3'
Good news for fans of RockStar's blockbuster western franchise! The studio announced this week that it had already started imprisoning programmers to kickstart the development of Red Dead Redemption 3.
"We've herded an incredibly talented team of programmers into holding pens, and they're already hard at work making sure Red Dead 3 is the most immersive installment in franchise history," Rockstar producer and company president Sam Houser told us by phone, explaining that the dedicated team of coders were fully committed to working around-the-clock shifts in their windowless cells until the open-world sequel gets into gamers' hands. "After their first few days chained to their workstations without any sleep, these guys put together a pretty killer demo of what a next-gen Wild West experience might look like. And that's with breaks every 12 hours to use their metal toilets or make their one phone call to say goodbye to family and friends. It just makes us more excited than ever to see the kind of revolutionary game mechanics they'll put together once we take away the team's food and water during crunch."
Exciting stuff! But if you're hoping to join the hallowed ranks who get to work on this surefire blockbuster, think again: RockStar told us they've already rejected over 200 applications for positions in their programming cages.
Crunch on RDR3 has apparently already begun.
RockStar Games Begins Imprisoning Programmers For 'Red Dead Redemption 3'
Good news for fans of RockStar's blockbuster western franchise! The studio announced this week that it had already started imprisoning programmers to kickstart the development of Red Dead Redemption 3.
"We've herded an incredibly talented team of programmers into holding pens, and they're already hard at work making sure Red Dead 3 is the most immersive installment in franchise history," Rockstar producer and company president Sam Houser told us by phone, explaining that the dedicated team of coders were fully committed to working around-the-clock shifts in their windowless cells until the open-world sequel gets into gamers' hands. "After their first few days chained to their workstations without any sleep, these guys put together a pretty killer demo of what a next-gen Wild West experience might look like. And that's with breaks every 12 hours to use their metal toilets or make their one phone call to say goodbye to family and friends. It just makes us more excited than ever to see the kind of revolutionary game mechanics they'll put together once we take away the team's food and water during crunch."
Exciting stuff! But if you're hoping to join the hallowed ranks who get to work on this surefire blockbuster, think again: RockStar told us they've already rejected over 200 applications for positions in their programming cages.
Isn't it against the law for them not to pay overtime if someone is scheduled for over 40 hours in a week? I can understand manipulating schedules so they're just under the amount that's mandatory to give them benefits, though.
I wish this story had come out before the games release. I would have reconsidered supporting these types of practices with a full $60 purchase.
But I am glad the information is out there so that voices can be heard and hopefully changes can be made.
But I am glad the information is out there so that voices can be heard and hopefully changes can be made.
And clothes. Hey anyone hear about female textile workers being pressured into abortions by bosses? Or being forced into sexual acts? Or dying from overheating? Or having a building collapse because it was made by crooks? Yeah, those walmart socks were literally made with blood, sweat, and tears.
I live in Chicago and just last year I was making 10.50/hr working full time living in an apartment by myself. It fucking sucked, but to be honest I wasn't struggling to make ends meet and was never late on any bills. They are underpaid, but not criminally like a lot of people would think
Then you make an example of one dev or publisher as a deterrence.
It's good to get the information out there, but this is sadly common in pretty much every game on shelves. It's not a one-off thing. If you bought any games, chances are astronomically high that these conditions were involved in its creation.
It's very much a "you don't want to see how the sausage is made" situation for gamers.
In a just world, sure, but EVO isn't a benevolent event. They get a LOT of publisher money and sponsorships. The organizers at EVO get paid quite a bit to host big game tournaments. They have zero reason to remove a game for its problematic work conditions when those same conditions apply to every entry they have and they're only in it to get paid.
If the dates and funds are set, then you should adjust the scope. It's most definitely not the publisher's fault.
If there's one person to blame, it's Ed Boon. He's the creative lead and studio lead. He determines the scope, he sells the pitch to the publisher, he creates the culture of crunch.
To be honest they didn't have to work there. Obviously people want to work in a field they have went to school for but if the conditions are so crappy and you can make the same at walmart id just go to Walmart if I were them.
All the more reason to boycott this broken fucking industry and support workers uniting. Just because this is normal doesn't make it ok. Not too long ago it was ok to own people and socially acceptable to beat your wife and kids. There is nothing ok about nearly enslaving workers to produce a useless piece of digital entertainment. I promise to not support the AAA industry or any game made off the backs of abused workers until these people unionize. I will shout this on a mountain to anyone willing to listen.
While this is most likely true you have to start with the ones that are proven through testimony and shame them. It has a dismissive nature when "this happens everywhere" is used. People think saying "this happens everywhere" makes the problem seem bigger but I think it has the opposite effect and normalizes it.
We have actual whistleblowers now from all those companies mentioned in this article and Bioware from the Kotaku article. It is reasonable to single these companies out because most likely doing so will cause people that work for other companies to say "hey that happens here too!"
In previous jobs I've had I would be listed as part time but would work 45 hour 'weeks' at a time. The work week would start on Monday, I would have time off on the start of the week. Then proceed to work the rest of that week and the start of the next work week. Usually 7-8 days totalling 45 ish hours. I'd still have days off yes. But no OT pay because that was technically two different pay periods.
Nothing unusual admittedly but it effectively allowed the company to work us like full time with reduced labor costs.
Easier said than done, believe me, it's hard having to accept a shitty life.
I'm glad these stories are becoming more and more prominent, keep em coming and something MAYBE might change.
Every time this shit comes up, it becomes harder and harder to justify spending money on the majority of this industry. They need to unionize across the board, and they needed to do it in 1998.
It's not accepting a shittier life if your work conditions are improved and you make the same or more. I've had to quit a job over poor conditions before and make less money but ultimately its for the best. I would also think people going into the field should be aware of what starting pay opportunities and what not are like.
Doesn't that still average out though? So basically they're work you like heck on the weekends or whatever the busy time was, but you'd effectively get the surrounding times off? Otherwise I don't see how they could schedule you for so many hours over however many pay periods and avoid overtime or classifying you as full time, and they still can't schedule you for more than 8 hours in a day without overtime.
Both of you are correct, and I apologize if it seems like I was normalizing or hand-waving their behavior.
I went to college for game design and animation and working in the industry was soul-crushing. I couldn't sustain it, not if I wanted a healthy work-life balance. I still love games, and I want to make games, but I have a family to support now and I'll work a job I'm less passionate about if it means I can spend time with them.
But that... shouldn't have been our reality. Developers should unionize. Conditions need to improve. We shouldn't just throw up our hands and accept that this is "normal" for every developer.
We hear these stories all the time... it's been, what, 15 years since the infamous "EA WIVES" scandal and nothing improved. So keep calling it out. Keep pushing for it.
Because developers have been calling it out for decades. It's our job as consumers to help make the change.
These companies promise their workers that if they work hard they'll move up. They also constantly allude to spots either opening soon or spots that'll be available to workers at the end of the project to keep morale up so that people don't feel like they will be let go near the end of the project.
The other problem is that the video game industry promotes "paying your dues to work your way to the top" and keeps that message cycling constantly with internal messaging and PR talking about people who were "just like you" at one point in time but worked their way up giving people the illusion that it could be them if they just worked hard enough.
In all truthfulness the company was never planning to keep these people anyways, if spots were open they were very few and already promised to people on the team that were good friends with someone who could make it happen..
Source: worked in a third party QA company that treated their workers much like NetherRealm did. These workers should unionize, as fast as they can.
I'm a little confused here. Isn't it on developers to unionize? What change are consumers going to make that is going to be more effective than the top ranks of developers standing together with the bottom ranks?
Can say the same about yours, so not really relevant to say this...
Sounds like a shitty field to be a contractor in. Im curious what school is like for these kinds of things, and how well they prepare people for reality. Theres a lot of fields where you have to pay your dues. I would think with more experience they might be able to eventually get out of contract work and get a better job
This is only from the outside looking in, but a lot of the schools that specifically advertise degrees that will get you into the game industry seem kind of scummy and the type that would promise you well paying jobs so that you pay for your degree with them. But maybe that's just my bias.
If you keep endorsing and supporting their methods, the top ranks will have little reason to support the others because "it works" for them and their group, and the rest were always seen as disposable.
I once worked for a certain company repairing laptops. 6 days a week, 12 hour shift minimum, often threatened to be fired if i didn't meet my quota. We worked in a small room inside a larger warehouse, it was probably 110 degrees most days. Someone passed out due to the heat and had to be taken to the hospital one day, their response was an additional 5 minute break to get water. One day after working 13 hours, i was heading out. I hadn't quite met my quota because the shipment of repair parts did not come in that night, there just werent any parts. I literally could not work on anything else. Manager stopped me and told me i *couldn't* leave until i hit the quota, as if he would physically prevent me from leaving. That was the last straw for me, i slipped away when he went on break and never came back. This sounds like some real "third world country" country type shit doesn't it? This was in the US.
Companies do not give a shit about you.
Companies do not give a shit about you.
You are not owed a permanent position but you are owed basic human decency and reasonable working conditions. Like seriously, read the article, this goes waay beyond a permanent position at the company.
Also: Fucking unionize already.
Times are a changing. Things are very different in general. Metoo movement would have went nowhere even just 5 years ago. Matt Lauer was fired for crying out loud. Just because it fell on deaf ears 15 years ago doesn't mean it will continue to. I have been following gaming news for a very long time and I have never seen a time like now where there is actual real push back against poor practices whether it be predatory mtx or development practices.
Many of these scumbags have gone unchecked for many years but now they are being called out by name and with specifics. Things that people used to get away with just a few years ago are becoming much more difficult for them to get away with now. Bioware has been saying "Bioware Magic" for years and only this year do we finally hear anything about it.
It doesn't mean it will change overnight but with gaming news sites seeking out stories like this more and more the top execs will be looking for scapegoats and that's when you get the juicy whistelblowers with the real inside shit. More to come.
And you are right, and not EVERY developer believes in these conditions either.
I have a lot of respect for Tim Schafer for advocating strongly for it. Granted, HE has to help make it happen to...