With the past overtime policies of EA and the recent turmoil at Team Bondi, there has been a lot of uproarious discussion regarding overtime in the game industry. If you are familiar with the industry you know that overtime has even been given its own name of “Crunch”. Crunch happens when developers are approaching a milestone in the development of a project but are unable to achieve the goals of that milestone during a normal 40 hour work week.
Crunch is a difficult thing to endure. There are times where the lines of legality regarding work hours are blurred. Sometimes the developer will say “This is the deadline, get it done.” and it is up to the individual to effectively use their time to complete the tasks with overtime becoming mandated if they do not close to their goal as the deadline approaches. Publishers also want to ensure that the millions of dollars they spent on a games development result in a marketable product. Something outsiders need to realize before they judge the “poor working conditions” of the game industry is that many times the developer’s hands are tied. They don’t want to work these poor people to death. There is a project, and there is a deadline. It’s as simple as that.
It seems like when reports come out about crunch that they neglect to mention all of the great perks that usually come with working at a game studio. There is often times free snacks, bonuses, giveaways, free soda and even free meals provided during crunch. One could argue that the reason the studio offers these things is to keep the development team at their desk working rather than having to leave for a meal. Even if that is the case, the many perks that come with working at a game developer are definitely greater than the sum of their parts.
Many gamers are unsure what stance to take on the issue of heavy crunch. While everyone can agree that is it uncomfortable, some see how crunch is necessary. Fewer still realize that the negative effects of crunch are not limited to just developers and their families. When a game slips past its release date and gets delayed, that is a considerable about of cash that is added to the game’s budget. If a 50 developer team making 60k a year gets delayed by six months that adds 1.5 million dollars to labor ALONE. That’s not to mentioning all the other costs that are accrued over the course of a regular development period. Who do you think is going to pay that additional cost in the end? Not the corporate big wigs who balance the budget. It will be us gamers that paying the cost. Be it through increased game prices next generation or having to pay for game services (Multiplayer, CoD Elite, ETC), gamers are paying the bill.
Nobody likes that crunch is happening but the reality of it is that overtime will always be present in a deadline based industry. The main concern is how MUCH crunch there is and how the issue is being addressed. Publishers and developers are consistently looking for ways to alleviate the problem but it is not a black and white issue. How do you motivate salaried employees to do their job on time? There has been many instances of a game being delayed simply because a few select developers were too lazy to do their jobs efficiently. While is it becoming a rarity, many times developers are laid off after a major project ships. What incentive do they have to finish as quickly as they can?
The only thing we can hope for out of this whole Team Bondi situation is a clearer understanding of why crunch happens and maybe slowly work our way towards a solution. Anybody have any ideas?
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
It sounds like bad time manigement, when you start a project most companmys generaly know how long said project will take, If a company is having to "Crunch" then they did't realisticly have the nesecarry time required to finish developing the game.
Im an outsider so I may be missing some of the details but thats how it looks to me
Its a normal thing for many industries. I know people on salaries who work 60-70 hrs a week to meet deadlines. If u cant handle it get another job. People should be treated fairly but it comes with the territory. I think they should just double their staff though. It would probably cost less than paying overtime unless theyre on salary or get paid a set amount per project. I get paid per job despite how hard/easy it is and how long it takes me. I like my job (most days lol) so its all in a days work. Abuse of workers is never ok though, people deserve set breaks, lunches, and a safe working environment. A mean boss and pressure are different than unfair working conditions. The team bondie fiasco all depends on whether they were denied breaks, mistreated exc. Not getting credited is bs but between them and a seperate issue than the accusations of unfair working conditions.
It's all about profits.
1. Those who work crunch time hours, get paid a salary and not by the hour.
2. Upper management wants things put out faster and with an "acceptable" amount of bugs.
3. Marketing has proved that in order to keep an appropriate amount of public interest in a game, you should release on a yearly or two year schedule or somewhere in between, which sets their desired "deadlines". Especially if you are releasing in the fall.
In regards to Team Bondi, let me first get the concept that "they've been developing this for 7 years" out of the way with the fact that it's likely the majority of the programming that involved taking the externally produced elements and putting them all together was primarily done in the last two years.
The need for the crunch likely came from the unexpected extended QA review periods due to the incorporation of the new facial capture technology and tying these to the other elements of the game and the various graphical elements/options.
Now, how can it be solved? There will always be some crunch time, but you can alleviate it by removing the element of greed in most high profile cases. What this means, is extending the release schedule by taking into account the time that normally would be used for our current crunch time into a few months of extra work.
But, when it comes to lower profile games, such as the plethora of movie to game productions or smaller dev teams working on much smaller budgets that are fueled by third-party investments with their own goals of seeing more profits than wasted time, crunch time will likely be the same as always. But, for these type of games, crunch time is normally a more personal element, where most persons involved are personally invested and will reap the benefits from the possible growth of the company from the success of the game.
Why is captain crunch a jackass?