Exactly lol.
Exactly lol.
Throw in designer clothes, phones etc..
Are you too young to remember devs and publishers opinions about second hand market/used games in 2008-2013 ? Honest questionWhat's the point of protesting if you'll just half-ass it by buying used? That doesn't send a message at all.
Hell even the argument that buying used = lost sale doesn't hold up.
The used games market is always a hot topic amongst developers and publishers who don't get a cut of any pre-owned sales. Frontier Development's David Braben argues that the used games business has effectively killed off the single-player focused endeavor, and he believes that not only are used games pushing more games to focus on a multiplayer setting, but he thinks those used games are helping to inflate prices on titles as studios seek ways to recoup lost revenues.
"The real problem when you think about it brutally, if you look at just core gamer games, pre-owned has really killed core games," reflected Braben. "In some cases, it's killed them dead. I know publishers who have stopped games in development because most shops won't reorder stock after initial release, because they rely on the churn from the re-sales."
Like supporting unions and voting for lawmakers who will crack down on exploitation.also this is not on the consumer. These boycott go nowhere. There are better forms of advocacy.
So, ex-AAA dev here with some feedback for those that actually want to change crunch practices.
1) Almost everyone crunches.
Most studios, especially in AAA, have crunch. In fact, out of the four different publishers I have worked for, every single one expected ALL studios under them to crunch to hit milestones/deadlines. And studios oblige because you don't want to lose incentives, bonuses, funding, or support staff. The list of studios who don't crunch - the list of products that are made 'crunch-free' is going to be unbelievably small if you are looking at AAA products. So if you plan to boycott products that are made in toxic work environments - it's going to be the vast majority of games. That's just how the industry is and boycotting isn't going to solve that.
Oh, and side note: People lie. Or exaggerate. Or downplay. I have had other developers in my own studio during crunch claim to not be crunching because we were only working 60-70 hours a week. Because their last studio worked 80+ during crunch. So this isn't crunch. Because we're in some toxic environment Olympics and shit ain't as bad as the worst experience I've ever had so...
Or, my personal favorite, when "We don't have crunch" actually means "We don't have mandatory crunch". Let me tell you about 'voluntary overtime'. It ain't voluntary. There are always punishments for not 'volunteering' to work extra hours during 'not crunch'. Either you start getting bad performance reviews from your bosses because it 'doesn't seem like you are putting in the extra effort'. Or you get left off emails or meetings out of spite. Or you get reassigned to some other part of the project that is less prestigious or more rudimentary, grunt work. Or you just straight up get demoted or fired. And what quickly happens is that you are bullied into either crunching (but 'not crunching') or pushed out of the company.
There are a lot of developers willing to publicly tow the company line that they 'don't crunch' because it's voluntary. Or their work environment isn't toxic because 'we have great benefits'. I have worked for some exceptionally shitty companies and every single one had developers willing to go in front of the media and proclaim just how awesome the studio and work environment were.
2) Boycotting punishes developers more than publishers.
I've seen countless players (and the media) claim to be fighting the industry's business practices - be it loot boxes, microtransactions, crunch, storefront exclusivity, whatever - by either boycotting products or giving poor reviews. And somehow this will show those in control of these products (publishers) that their ways are wrong. It doesn't. The people at the top of most of these companies are... fucking insane. There's probably more appropriate word to describe their behavior but I don't know what it is. There's no introspection going on when something with the game doesn't pan out. Bad reviews don't make studio heads and publishers think "Oh, geez, maybe it was the bullshit monetization we did that tanked the product!"
What happens is - excuses get made that are almost universally laid on the development team. YOU didn't implement our vision properly. YOU didn't work hard enough on these features. YOU didn't do enough crunch. YOU missed this milestone and that's why our game bombed.
Bonuses are withheld, developers are laid off, benefits at the studio are slashed.
This shit don't work.
Oh, by the way, one thing about this I want to highlight: Bonuses in the game industry.
Base salary at a lot of game studios is actually pretty low. I know every time the Game Developer Salary survey (or something similar) comes out and people look and see "OMG, devs make $90k a year!". Yeah, most of those are reporting ALL income - including bonuses. Bonuses are a HUGE portion of overall income for some developers. I have seen developers earn anywhere from 10%-100% of their yearly salary in a launch bonus. So, sure, I may have made $120k this year, but half of that was from the launch bonus.
But then the game gets bad sales for whatever reason. Or bad reviews. Well, my bonus was tied to a combination of metacritic score and sales benchmarks. And now I get nothing. The studio head still walks away with a six figure bonus. The publisher executives get paid 10x my salary regardless. The only person actually feeling any financial punishment are the developers.
So, buy whatever the hell you want. While developers probably appreciate the gesture, you aren't actually fixing any problems - and you might actually be actively hurting the people you are trying to stand up for.
Edit: Another reason talking about this is so damn hard is that even within the same studio, different jobs can have wildly different contracts and experiences. My experiences have been as a full time systems designer. I know other developers - especially artists - under contract rather than full time will not have the same issues with bonuses or even the same experiences with crunch. Sometimes one department will be working 80+ hours a week while another department, with different management, deadlines, etc., will be working 40 hours. One developer claiming bonuses matter while another claims they don't are not actually disagreeing - they just don't have the same work contract details. Just as one developer claiming they're not working crunch doesn't necessarily mean no one in the entire studio is, or vice versa.
do you really believe the rest of your post brings any kind of information that contradicts the quotes I used about what companies believe about used games?Why did you cut off the rest of my post that directly addressed why the Lost sale isn't as large a factor. And why it doesn't send a message at all.
Of course I know about the opinions of the gaming industry, but you missed the point entirely by cutting off what I said and then giving me a copy paste of what two companies said.
Like supporting unions and voting for lawmakers who will crack down on exploitation.
do you really believe the rest of your post brings any kind of information that contradicts the quotes I used about what companies believe about used games?
if so, keep the good fight kiddo, I will waste my time elsewhere
So, ex-AAA dev here with some feedback for those that actually want to change crunch practices.
1) Almost everyone crunches.
Most studios, especially in AAA, have crunch. In fact, out of the four different publishers I have worked for, every single one expected ALL studios under them to crunch to hit milestones/deadlines. And studios oblige because you don't want to lose incentives, bonuses, funding, or support staff. The list of studios who don't crunch - the list of products that are made 'crunch-free' is going to be unbelievably small if you are looking at AAA products. So if you plan to boycott products that are made in toxic work environments - it's going to be the vast majority of games. That's just how the industry is and boycotting isn't going to solve that.
Oh, and side note: People lie. Or exaggerate. Or downplay. I have had other developers in my own studio during crunch claim to not be crunching because we were only working 60-70 hours a week. Because their last studio worked 80+ during crunch. So this isn't crunch. Because we're in some toxic environment Olympics and shit ain't as bad as the worst experience I've ever had so...
Or, my personal favorite, when "We don't have crunch" actually means "We don't have mandatory crunch". Let me tell you about 'voluntary overtime'. It ain't voluntary. There are always punishments for not 'volunteering' to work extra hours during 'not crunch'. Either you start getting bad performance reviews from your bosses because it 'doesn't seem like you are putting in the extra effort'. Or you get left off emails or meetings out of spite. Or you get reassigned to some other part of the project that is less prestigious or more rudimentary, grunt work. Or you just straight up get demoted or fired. And what quickly happens is that you are bullied into either crunching (but 'not crunching') or pushed out of the company.
There are a lot of developers willing to publicly tow the company line that they 'don't crunch' because it's voluntary. Or their work environment isn't toxic because 'we have great benefits'. I have worked for some exceptionally shitty companies and every single one had developers willing to go in front of the media and proclaim just how awesome the studio and work environment were.
2) Boycotting punishes developers more than publishers.
I've seen countless players (and the media) claim to be fighting the industry's business practices - be it loot boxes, microtransactions, crunch, storefront exclusivity, whatever - by either boycotting products or giving poor reviews. And somehow this will show those in control of these products (publishers) that their ways are wrong. It doesn't. The people at the top of most of these companies are... fucking insane. There's probably more appropriate word to describe their behavior but I don't know what it is. There's no introspection going on when something with the game doesn't pan out. Bad reviews don't make studio heads and publishers think "Oh, geez, maybe it was the bullshit monetization we did that tanked the product!"
What happens is - excuses get made that are almost universally laid on the development team. YOU didn't implement our vision properly. YOU didn't work hard enough on these features. YOU didn't do enough crunch. YOU missed this milestone and that's why our game bombed.
Bonuses are withheld, developers are laid off, benefits at the studio are slashed.
This shit don't work.
Oh, by the way, one thing about this I want to highlight: Bonuses in the game industry.
Base salary at a lot of game studios is actually pretty low. I know every time the Game Developer Salary survey (or something similar) comes out and people look and see "OMG, devs make $90k a year!". Yeah, most of those are reporting ALL income - including bonuses. Bonuses are a HUGE portion of overall income for some developers. I have seen developers earn anywhere from 10%-100% of their yearly salary in a launch bonus. So, sure, I may have made $120k this year, but half of that was from the launch bonus.
But then the game gets bad sales for whatever reason. Or bad reviews. Well, my bonus was tied to a combination of metacritic score and sales benchmarks. And now I get nothing. The studio head still walks away with a six figure bonus. The publisher executives get paid 10x my salary regardless. The only person actually feeling any financial punishment are the developers.
So, buy whatever the hell you want. While developers probably appreciate the gesture, you aren't actually fixing any problems - and you might actually be actively hurting the people you are trying to stand up for.
Edit: Another reason talking about this is so damn hard is that even within the same studio, different jobs can have wildly different contracts and experiences. My experiences have been as a full time systems designer. I know other developers - especially artists - under contract rather than full time will not have the same issues with bonuses or even the same experiences with crunch. Sometimes one department will be working 80+ hours a week while another department, with different management, deadlines, etc., will be working 40 hours. One developer claiming bonuses matter while another claims they don't are not actually disagreeing - they just don't have the same work contract details. Just as one developer claiming they're not working crunch doesn't necessarily mean no one in the entire studio is, or vice versa.
...Join you? Nah. I'm good. I DO think crunch is TERRIBLE, but I kinda want to play the game.
This is pretty great insight. Dope post.So, ex-AAA dev here with some feedback for those that actually want to change crunch practices.
1) Almost everyone crunches.
Most studios, especially in AAA, have crunch. In fact, out of the four different publishers I have worked for, every single one expected ALL studios under them to crunch to hit milestones/deadlines. And studios oblige because you don't want to lose incentives, bonuses, funding, or support staff. The list of studios who don't crunch - the list of products that are made 'crunch-free' is going to be unbelievably small if you are looking at AAA products. So if you plan to boycott products that are made in toxic work environments - it's going to be the vast majority of games. That's just how the industry is and boycotting isn't going to solve that.
Oh, and side note: People lie. Or exaggerate. Or downplay. I have had other developers in my own studio during crunch claim to not be crunching because we were only working 60-70 hours a week. Because their last studio worked 80+ during crunch. So this isn't crunch. Because we're in some toxic environment Olympics and shit ain't as bad as the worst experience I've ever had so...
Or, my personal favorite, when "We don't have crunch" actually means "We don't have mandatory crunch". Let me tell you about 'voluntary overtime'. It ain't voluntary. There are always punishments for not 'volunteering' to work extra hours during 'not crunch'. Either you start getting bad performance reviews from your bosses because it 'doesn't seem like you are putting in the extra effort'. Or you get left off emails or meetings out of spite. Or you get reassigned to some other part of the project that is less prestigious or more rudimentary, grunt work. Or you just straight up get demoted or fired. And what quickly happens is that you are bullied into either crunching (but 'not crunching') or pushed out of the company.
There are a lot of developers willing to publicly tow the company line that they 'don't crunch' because it's voluntary. Or their work environment isn't toxic because 'we have great benefits'. I have worked for some exceptionally shitty companies and every single one had developers willing to go in front of the media and proclaim just how awesome the studio and work environment were.
2) Boycotting punishes developers more than publishers.
I've seen countless players (and the media) claim to be fighting the industry's business practices - be it loot boxes, microtransactions, crunch, storefront exclusivity, whatever - by either boycotting products or giving poor reviews. And somehow this will show those in control of these products (publishers) that their ways are wrong. It doesn't. The people at the top of most of these companies are... fucking insane. There's probably more appropriate word to describe their behavior but I don't know what it is. There's no introspection going on when something with the game doesn't pan out. Bad reviews don't make studio heads and publishers think "Oh, geez, maybe it was the bullshit monetization we did that tanked the product!"
What happens is - excuses get made that are almost universally laid on the development team. YOU didn't implement our vision properly. YOU didn't work hard enough on these features. YOU didn't do enough crunch. YOU missed this milestone and that's why our game bombed.
Bonuses are withheld, developers are laid off, benefits at the studio are slashed.
This shit don't work.
Oh, by the way, one thing about this I want to highlight: Bonuses in the game industry.
Base salary at a lot of game studios is actually pretty low. I know every time the Game Developer Salary survey (or something similar) comes out and people look and see "OMG, devs make $90k a year!". Yeah, most of those are reporting ALL income - including bonuses. Bonuses are a HUGE portion of overall income for some developers. I have seen developers earn anywhere from 10%-100% of their yearly salary in a launch bonus. So, sure, I may have made $120k this year, but half of that was from the launch bonus.
But then the game gets bad sales for whatever reason. Or bad reviews. Well, my bonus was tied to a combination of metacritic score and sales benchmarks. And now I get nothing. The studio head still walks away with a six figure bonus. The publisher executives get paid 10x my salary regardless. The only person actually feeling any financial punishment are the developers.
So, buy whatever the hell you want. While developers probably appreciate the gesture, you aren't actually fixing any problems - and you might actually be actively hurting the people you are trying to stand up for.
Edit: Another reason talking about this is so damn hard is that even within the same studio, different jobs can have wildly different contracts and experiences. My experiences have been as a full time systems designer. I know other developers - especially artists - under contract rather than full time will not have the same issues with bonuses or even the same experiences with crunch. Sometimes one department will be working 80+ hours a week while another department, with different management, deadlines, etc., will be working 40 hours. One developer claiming bonuses matter while another claims they don't are not actually disagreeing - they just don't have the same work contract details. Just as one developer claiming they're not working crunch doesn't necessarily mean no one in the entire studio is, or vice versa.
Would love to know how many of the boycotters here are gonna end up playing the game. Or how many are posting from their IPhones.
This is who to support.
A boycott for majority of AAA games is that CoD MW2 picture. lol
Its not going to dent it and as others have said it just hurts everyone more.
Exactly.
I just want to reiterate: If this was a smaller game that wasn't as beloved getting this publicity, would we be seeing more people on board with the boycott? The mood here, even 21 pages in, seems to be "sucks but getting the game anyways because reasons". I'm not hating on anyone who isn't boycotting or really making an opinion on those who are. I just have trouble seeing any sincerity in the opinions given the subject matter. I'm curious as to if the bias toward ND's quality games is shrouding peoples' judgement.
I don't want to join. I don't even care about crunch. These are adults who are being compensated, and in the case of Naughty Dog the article says that they're upfront with new hires about the crunch culture there. Some of the employees enjoy it and some don't. They lost a lot of employees after Uncharted 4; as far as I'm concerned that's how the issue should be handled. The fact is that artistic endeavors require blood, sweat, and tears a lot of the time. Some people are willing to give that. More power to the ones who aren't, but let them find another place to work.
I know, its laughable. Some in this thread take this stuff very seriously. I mean try and gain some perspective here.Lol its funny seeing people trying to be so high and mighty while they type their comments from their smart phone manufactured in China by people who work in much worse conditions.
Most of the stuff you own is made by someone working under worse conditions than video game developers. Seems like an odd place to draw the line.
There was an article released a few weeks ago about slave labor in China and how almost every large company in the world uses them that got barely any reaction.
So, ex-AAA dev here with some feedback for those that actually want to change crunch practices.
1) Almost everyone crunches.
Most studios, especially in AAA, have crunch. In fact, out of the four different publishers I have worked for, every single one expected ALL studios under them to crunch to hit milestones/deadlines. And studios oblige because you don't want to lose incentives, bonuses, funding, or support staff. The list of studios who don't crunch - the list of products that are made 'crunch-free' is going to be unbelievably small if you are looking at AAA products. So if you plan to boycott products that are made in toxic work environments - it's going to be the vast majority of games. That's just how the industry is and boycotting isn't going to solve that.
Oh, and side note: People lie. Or exaggerate. Or downplay. I have had other developers in my own studio during crunch claim to not be crunching because we were only working 60-70 hours a week. Because their last studio worked 80+ during crunch. So this isn't crunch. Because we're in some toxic environment Olympics and shit ain't as bad as the worst experience I've ever had so...
Or, my personal favorite, when "We don't have crunch" actually means "We don't have mandatory crunch". Let me tell you about 'voluntary overtime'. It ain't voluntary. There are always punishments for not 'volunteering' to work extra hours during 'not crunch'. Either you start getting bad performance reviews from your bosses because it 'doesn't seem like you are putting in the extra effort'. Or you get left off emails or meetings out of spite. Or you get reassigned to some other part of the project that is less prestigious or more rudimentary, grunt work. Or you just straight up get demoted or fired. And what quickly happens is that you are bullied into either crunching (but 'not crunching') or pushed out of the company.
There are a lot of developers willing to publicly tow the company line that they 'don't crunch' because it's voluntary. Or their work environment isn't toxic because 'we have great benefits'. I have worked for some exceptionally shitty companies and every single one had developers willing to go in front of the media and proclaim just how awesome the studio and work environment were.
2) Boycotting punishes developers more than publishers.
I've seen countless players (and the media) claim to be fighting the industry's business practices - be it loot boxes, microtransactions, crunch, storefront exclusivity, whatever - by either boycotting products or giving poor reviews. And somehow this will show those in control of these products (publishers) that their ways are wrong. It doesn't. The people at the top of most of these companies are... fucking insane. There's probably more appropriate word to describe their behavior but I don't know what it is. There's no introspection going on when something with the game doesn't pan out. Bad reviews don't make studio heads and publishers think "Oh, geez, maybe it was the bullshit monetization we did that tanked the product!"
What happens is - excuses get made that are almost universally laid on the development team. YOU didn't implement our vision properly. YOU didn't work hard enough on these features. YOU didn't do enough crunch. YOU missed this milestone and that's why our game bombed.
Bonuses are withheld, developers are laid off, benefits at the studio are slashed.
This shit don't work.
Oh, by the way, one thing about this I want to highlight: Bonuses in the game industry.
Base salary at a lot of game studios is actually pretty low. I know every time the Game Developer Salary survey (or something similar) comes out and people look and see "OMG, devs make $90k a year!". Yeah, most of those are reporting ALL income - including bonuses. Bonuses are a HUGE portion of overall income for some developers. I have seen developers earn anywhere from 10%-100% of their yearly salary in a launch bonus. So, sure, I may have made $120k this year, but half of that was from the launch bonus.
But then the game gets bad sales for whatever reason. Or bad reviews. Well, my bonus was tied to a combination of metacritic score and sales benchmarks. And now I get nothing. The studio head still walks away with a six figure bonus. The publisher executives get paid 10x my salary regardless. The only person actually feeling any financial punishment are the developers.
So, buy whatever the hell you want. While developers probably appreciate the gesture, you aren't actually fixing any problems - and you might actually be actively hurting the people you are trying to stand up for.
Edit: Another reason talking about this is so damn hard is that even within the same studio, different jobs can have wildly different contracts and experiences. My experiences have been as a full time systems designer. I know other developers - especially artists - under contract rather than full time will not have the same issues with bonuses or even the same experiences with crunch. Sometimes one department will be working 80+ hours a week while another department, with different management, deadlines, etc., will be working 40 hours. One developer claiming bonuses matter while another claims they don't are not actually disagreeing - they just don't have the same work contract details. Just as one developer claiming they're not working crunch doesn't necessarily mean no one in the entire studio is, or vice versa.
This is a very insightful post.So, ex-AAA dev here with some feedback for those that actually want to change crunch practices.
1) Almost everyone crunches.
Most studios, especially in AAA, have crunch. In fact, out of the four different publishers I have worked for, every single one expected ALL studios under them to crunch to hit milestones/deadlines. And studios oblige because you don't want to lose incentives, bonuses, funding, or support staff. The list of studios who don't crunch - the list of products that are made 'crunch-free' is going to be unbelievably small if you are looking at AAA products. So if you plan to boycott products that are made in toxic work environments - it's going to be the vast majority of games. That's just how the industry is and boycotting isn't going to solve that.
Oh, and side note: People lie. Or exaggerate. Or downplay. I have had other developers in my own studio during crunch claim to not be crunching because we were only working 60-70 hours a week. Because their last studio worked 80+ during crunch. So this isn't crunch. Because we're in some toxic environment Olympics and shit ain't as bad as the worst experience I've ever had so...
Or, my personal favorite, when "We don't have crunch" actually means "We don't have mandatory crunch". Let me tell you about 'voluntary overtime'. It ain't voluntary. There are always punishments for not 'volunteering' to work extra hours during 'not crunch'. Either you start getting bad performance reviews from your bosses because it 'doesn't seem like you are putting in the extra effort'. Or you get left off emails or meetings out of spite. Or you get reassigned to some other part of the project that is less prestigious or more rudimentary, grunt work. Or you just straight up get demoted or fired. And what quickly happens is that you are bullied into either crunching (but 'not crunching') or pushed out of the company.
There are a lot of developers willing to publicly tow the company line that they 'don't crunch' because it's voluntary. Or their work environment isn't toxic because 'we have great benefits'. I have worked for some exceptionally shitty companies and every single one had developers willing to go in front of the media and proclaim just how awesome the studio and work environment were.
2) Boycotting punishes developers more than publishers.
I've seen countless players (and the media) claim to be fighting the industry's business practices - be it loot boxes, microtransactions, crunch, storefront exclusivity, whatever - by either boycotting products or giving poor reviews. And somehow this will show those in control of these products (publishers) that their ways are wrong. It doesn't. The people at the top of most of these companies are... fucking insane. There's probably more appropriate word to describe their behavior but I don't know what it is. There's no introspection going on when something with the game doesn't pan out. Bad reviews don't make studio heads and publishers think "Oh, geez, maybe it was the bullshit monetization we did that tanked the product!"
What happens is - excuses get made that are almost universally laid on the development team. YOU didn't implement our vision properly. YOU didn't work hard enough on these features. YOU didn't do enough crunch. YOU missed this milestone and that's why our game bombed.
Bonuses are withheld, developers are laid off, benefits at the studio are slashed.
This shit don't work.
Oh, by the way, one thing about this I want to highlight: Bonuses in the game industry.
Base salary at a lot of game studios is actually pretty low. I know every time the Game Developer Salary survey (or something similar) comes out and people look and see "OMG, devs make $90k a year!". Yeah, most of those are reporting ALL income - including bonuses. Bonuses are a HUGE portion of overall income for some developers. I have seen developers earn anywhere from 10%-100% of their yearly salary in a launch bonus. So, sure, I may have made $120k this year, but half of that was from the launch bonus.
But then the game gets bad sales for whatever reason. Or bad reviews. Well, my bonus was tied to a combination of metacritic score and sales benchmarks. And now I get nothing. The studio head still walks away with a six figure bonus. The publisher executives get paid 10x my salary regardless. The only person actually feeling any financial punishment are the developers.
So, buy whatever the hell you want. While developers probably appreciate the gesture, you aren't actually fixing any problems - and you might actually be actively hurting the people you are trying to stand up for.
Edit: Another reason talking about this is so damn hard is that even within the same studio, different jobs can have wildly different contracts and experiences. My experiences have been as a full time systems designer. I know other developers - especially artists - under contract rather than full time will not have the same issues with bonuses or even the same experiences with crunch. Sometimes one department will be working 80+ hours a week while another department, with different management, deadlines, etc., will be working 40 hours. One developer claiming bonuses matter while another claims they don't are not actually disagreeing - they just don't have the same work contract details. Just as one developer claiming they're not working crunch doesn't necessarily mean no one in the entire studio is, or vice versa.
Nah when it comes to topics like this. This is exactly how Era behaves.The reaction to this thread has been quite shocking, at least based on what I thought the general concensus of ERA would have been.
Which is why those professions have unions.It's not even just devs that have to deal with "crunch". Many retail/service workers deal with something extremely similar every year around Black Friday. Doctors, lawyers, police, firefighters, and many other professions routinely deal with working much more than 40 hours per week. It's unfortunate but it's fairly common in our society.
Thank you for taking the time to post this. As it gives much need insight into a very closed industry.So, ex-AAA dev here with some feedback for those that actually want to change crunch practices.
1) Almost everyone crunches.
Most studios, especially in AAA, have crunch. In fact, out of the four different publishers I have worked for, every single one expected ALL studios under them to crunch to hit milestones/deadlines. And studios oblige because you don't want to lose incentives, bonuses, funding, or support staff. The list of studios who don't crunch - the list of products that are made 'crunch-free' is going to be unbelievably small if you are looking at AAA products. So if you plan to boycott products that are made in toxic work environments - it's going to be the vast majority of games. That's just how the industry is and boycotting isn't going to solve that.
Oh, and side note: People lie. Or exaggerate. Or downplay. I have had other developers in my own studio during crunch claim to not be crunching because we were only working 60-70 hours a week. Because their last studio worked 80+ during crunch. So this isn't crunch. Because we're in some toxic environment Olympics and shit ain't as bad as the worst experience I've ever had so...
Or, my personal favorite, when "We don't have crunch" actually means "We don't have mandatory crunch". Let me tell you about 'voluntary overtime'. It ain't voluntary. There are always punishments for not 'volunteering' to work extra hours during 'not crunch'. Either you start getting bad performance reviews from your bosses because it 'doesn't seem like you are putting in the extra effort'. Or you get left off emails or meetings out of spite. Or you get reassigned to some other part of the project that is less prestigious or more rudimentary, grunt work. Or you just straight up get demoted or fired. And what quickly happens is that you are bullied into either crunching (but 'not crunching') or pushed out of the company.
There are a lot of developers willing to publicly tow the company line that they 'don't crunch' because it's voluntary. Or their work environment isn't toxic because 'we have great benefits'. I have worked for some exceptionally shitty companies and every single one had developers willing to go in front of the media and proclaim just how awesome the studio and work environment were.
2) Boycotting punishes developers more than publishers.
I've seen countless players (and the media) claim to be fighting the industry's business practices - be it loot boxes, microtransactions, crunch, storefront exclusivity, whatever - by either boycotting products or giving poor reviews. And somehow this will show those in control of these products (publishers) that their ways are wrong. It doesn't. The people at the top of most of these companies are... fucking insane. There's probably more appropriate word to describe their behavior but I don't know what it is. There's no introspection going on when something with the game doesn't pan out. Bad reviews don't make studio heads and publishers think "Oh, geez, maybe it was the bullshit monetization we did that tanked the product!"
What happens is - excuses get made that are almost universally laid on the development team. YOU didn't implement our vision properly. YOU didn't work hard enough on these features. YOU didn't do enough crunch. YOU missed this milestone and that's why our game bombed.
Bonuses are withheld, developers are laid off, benefits at the studio are slashed.
This shit don't work.
Oh, by the way, one thing about this I want to highlight: Bonuses in the game industry.
Base salary at a lot of game studios is actually pretty low. I know every time the Game Developer Salary survey (or something similar) comes out and people look and see "OMG, devs make $90k a year!". Yeah, most of those are reporting ALL income - including bonuses. Bonuses are a HUGE portion of overall income for some developers. I have seen developers earn anywhere from 10%-100% of their yearly salary in a launch bonus. So, sure, I may have made $120k this year, but half of that was from the launch bonus.
But then the game gets bad sales for whatever reason. Or bad reviews. Well, my bonus was tied to a combination of metacritic score and sales benchmarks. And now I get nothing. The studio head still walks away with a six figure bonus. The publisher executives get paid 10x my salary regardless. The only person actually feeling any financial punishment are the developers.
So, buy whatever the hell you want. While developers probably appreciate the gesture, you aren't actually fixing any problems - and you might actually be actively hurting the people you are trying to stand up for.
Edit: Another reason talking about this is so damn hard is that even within the same studio, different jobs can have wildly different contracts and experiences. My experiences have been as a full time systems designer. I know other developers - especially artists - under contract rather than full time will not have the same issues with bonuses or even the same experiences with crunch. Sometimes one department will be working 80+ hours a week while another department, with different management, deadlines, etc., will be working 40 hours. One developer claiming bonuses matter while another claims they don't are not actually disagreeing - they just don't have the same work contract details. Just as one developer claiming they're not working crunch doesn't necessarily mean no one in the entire studio is, or vice versa.
Indie games too, I don't think there's a single game I've worked on that didn't have crunch. Even if your company is wholely against crunch, when the people with the money want you to, you do it. Especially as an indie company because if you don't then suddenly all your friends can't afford to survive any more. It's stressful.