If I were a mid-level manager at Epic, I wonder how I would handle internal politics at this time. So many competing objectives...<p>1. Focus on producing novel content to keep the game interesting, mixing things up enough over weeks/months, but without killing the core mechanics.<p>2. Hire lots of new employees, all while knowing that the popularity bubble may burst and they may need to be laid off in the near future.<p>3. Give bonuses to my employees, who are working their tails off, to prevent resentment. Especially in the over-worked video game industry.<p>4. Acknowledge that this lucky streak is unrepeatable, and that if the game falls out of popularity, there is likely no one to blame. But when it happens, the demoralization will hit hard and the layoffs are inevitable.<p>5. All this, while the company reaps huge profits.
When I was contracting (not for Epic) I always negotiated an hourly rate. When they called for overtime I loved it, the meta is to become 10-20% more productive by whatever metric they use but bill 50-100% more hours at 1.5x my already large bill rate. I can generally work for 6 months like this without any life changing burn out symptoms.
As much as it sucks to implicitly require people to work so many hours, i'd say it's OK in the short term if they were compensated accordingly (overtime or big bonuses), which according to the article they were (3x the salary?). Maybe someone more familiar with epic could enlighten me.
Ah, I remember my first live game, where you think we'll just crunch for this release, it'll be fine. Then the next release comes and because you were crunching on the other it comes out half baked, so you crunch again and again and before you know it half the team that made it happen is gone and no one wants to work there. You see this mentality in a lot of mobile studios that we're started by ex-AAA employees. Hopefully they learn that you can't crunch a live game or you'll never stop crunching. Single release games eventually ended, a good live game can go on for a very long time. The next generation of mobile studios knew that and ended up having a very good policy of no over time... Well some did
I think they interviewed mostly people new to the gaming industry who don’t know how to manage their time under pressure, Epic isn’t an easy place if you’re not pretty senior, they expect you to know what to do with little guidance. That said they also see the company as being a marathon since it’s success isn’t certain and fragile, so it’s something they expect employees to take care of because it’s a unique place, maybe similar to how museum staff look after art work. No doubt it’s brutal with Fortnight’s success, and you will get fired if you’re not competent and pulling your weight, but that’s the industry they’re in, you can’t have a few people putting everyone else’s livelihood at risk, and they also compensate very well when they’re successful. So it’s not like some sweat shop, it’s more complex than the article makes it sound.
I might ruffle some feathers here but here it goes. Very much in the same manner some people refuse to eat inhumanely raised and slaughtered animals, buy diamonds or coffee from companies associated with slave-like labor, or palm oil because its harvesting destroys the tropical forests, or watch American football to protest constant stress of trauma for players, I refuse to play big name games. It is a moral stance. Once in a while I spend some time playing an indie game and before I do that I make sure to find the site or the blog of the producer.
Honest question, why would competent developers subject themselves to this kind of treatment? If a company ever "requested" that I work Saturday or Sunday I'd be gone later that same day.
Working more than 40 hours is stupid, but I can see doing it for very short times. In a culture where you are branded as not a team player if you don't work 70+ hours a week uncompensated is exactly what Marx called exploitation. You make other people wealthy while you burn yourself out. No matter the job its not worth it. If however you own the company it might be worth the risk of killing yourself, but it's not right to make other people do it to enrich yourself. Not that that ever stopped people from demanding others do it (see Jack Ma for an example).
It's remarkable how someone will always find a way to lambast successful companies even if it means faulting them for becoming successful and relevant in the first place.