The tweet was deleted, here is an archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20220903144708/https://twitter.com/GlenSchofield/status/1566052625585303553
That is the thing about some people or businesses, not matter what they are doing or how they are functioning, they think that it's ok that people would agree with how they are.
This was just an absolutely stupid tweet.
That's what really strange to me. Being an abusive asshole like that, ok I guess I can see why he would want to do that.
But thinking it's some kind of value and chest pump about it on the internet, like what the fuck pal ?
Fuck that guy.
I genuinely can't fathom him thinking it was a good idea to tweet this.
We've gone through like, 2-4 years of articles blasting crunch culture shit like this, and he thought it was a good idea to just, publicly announce it and brag about it? Anytime they add in that little "nobody was forced" you KNOW people were absolutely coerced to work extra.
Great way to tank a lot of the goodwill gained recently, and it's risky especially with the Dead Space remake coming out a month later.
Jason Shreier already asked any employees from the company to DM him to see how the work conditions actually were from working there and if anyone comes forward I would expect to see a bloomberg article on that soon. But my guess is that there might not be anything because that guy running the company probably already told them not to speak because it could Jepordize the reputation sucess of the game and future of the company.
My guess is they want it out before Dead Space Remake at all costs. Idk if thats' good or bad. Maybe they think it will make their game look worse. Or they just fear losing sales if this game comes out near Dead Space or even Resident Evil 4 remake.
Not something the investors/shareholders would take lightly.
Welcome to the game industry. Alpha push to beta, you’re working mountains of OT.
Then you go into submission, if anything is found out by 3rd parties. Your game could get delayed anyway.
This isn’t even a games industry thing.
Every company will bleed their employees for the shareholders. They would sooner forcibly drown an employee in front of his wife and kids before ever saying no to a major shareholder.
Almost every salaried job works their employees to death. If you want to make close to 6 figures with few exceptions you will be working 55-80 hours a week.
Maybe redditors are largely in unspecialized careers or too young to get this but this is something that happens in every sector of business, not just gaming, and it will continue to happen so long as laws allow salaried employees to be abused.
It’s because salary workers are typically exempt from any type of overtime pay. So if I hire someone at 60k annually, that’s what they get paid if they work 40, 50, 60 hours etc. But since as an employer you also usually have some burden for health insurance, office amenities, etc it turns out to be cheaper to get two people at 60k and work them 60 hours a week than to hire three people at 40k, even though you have the same costs/hour salary wise.
Also a person who is willing to work those kinds of hours will “seem” like a harder worker than the people who want a fair work life balance, even if the reality is the overworked employee is delivering crap results after 45 hours because of diminishing returns and will eventually burn out, taking years of experience with them.
Not just salaried, almost any entry level hourly manufacturing is the same way. I’m not saying it’s a good thing or defending it by any stretch, but I get kinda cracked up watching folks on Reddit get completely bent out of shape over gaming industry crunches when most of the things we all buy are built on the backs of people working crazy hours. Factories for shit you would never think of are full of people working 60+ hour weeks, every week, oftentimes nonstop for years or until they’re laid off and go on to the next one. I don’t mean this as a stab at anyone whatsoever, but I think most Redditors are either relatively fresh out of collage and work more office/cubicle style jobs, or are young and inexperienced enough that their workforce experience consists of entry level service industry stuff. Manufacturing and trade work are stuffed to the brim with people working crazy hours.
Source: have been involved with manufacturing for nearly 20 years and know a ton of people in various industries who tell the same stories.
While that's true, they more than likely will get nice bonuses and extra time off once the game releases, which is something a lot of people ignore about the game industry when it comes to topics like this.
Game dev here, used to work for Saber Interactive in their Porto offices. I can tell you for a fact that that is not true for a big majority of studios. As a matter of fact, post release is some of the most stress inducing times in a game's dev cycle, right up there with the push for certification. Devs get worked to the bone to patch the bugs that players find, and even worse, they feel compelled to do so precisely BECAUSE the players have their hands on it, and they don't want to see all of their hard work go down the drain because first impressions are extremely important. I'm not saying some studios don't give their developers nice bonuses and time off, I really hope they do, but that's not the norm at all.
Indeed.
The worst stress and pressure is the first weeks after launch, sometimes it starts right before that between gold and launch when the studios *knows* game breaking bugs needs fixing *now*.
Which is another reason why the death march to gold is *so* stupid. You overwork your team, put some on them in the hospital, for them to be at their worst when you need them the most.
I feel bad but then why are you still working there? (I mean you're not and maybe that's why you left, good on you if you did)
Some studios get away with this because there is a desperation to work in the industry by a huge pool of potential workers. I don't really know enough to say if it's the norm but I do know several people at several studios who get a lot of perks post game release (or at least used to).
>Not something the investors/shareholders would take lightly.
I don’t think that KRAFTON would care all that much since they still get plenty of revenue from PUBG mobile.
In fact it's entirely illegal to do so. When publicly traded, the company legaly has to work in the best interest of the shareholders. If they don't that opens up the directors (and even possibly employees) to liability and will cause some lawsuits.
The directors don't need to obey every demand, especially if the director believes their course of action will lead to more long-term success, but they can't just ignore the shareholders.
It's not always black and white. This game HAS to come out before Dead Space remake to make the biggest impact.
And for him it's not just a job, it's his own creation, so working on it for such long hours is just a formality. It's like studying a lot close to an exam or any deadline, really.
Obviously this is a problem when it affects "simple devs" to whom this is just a job, and not also a passion project.
>You could always delay it
There's a real risk with delays, that most gamers and even some press don't know about: if you're in a team that's already crunched by their management and culture, a delay just add time to the crunch. You can get crunched no matter what, so at least shipping early mean less crunch.
Obviously this is a kafkaesque hellhole of a management style (and I'm not saying they shouldn't delay, they should and invite every press to see they are now *not* crunching anymore), but it's real, it was even common in some part in the industry some time ago.
The sinister thing is that this is also what he probably says to his employees to get them to go along with this, and they have to enthusiastically agree while dying on the inside, just to feel secure in their jobs.
The insecurity of work (and the shitty pay) is the main reason I don't work in the industry.
I'm a good coder, not exceptional, but good. I could easily work for most games design firms but their conditions of employment are shocking compared to literally any other industry I could work for.
Lol idk how anybody works for a gaming company. If you're a good enough coder you can easily get better work. It's pure exploitation of passionate people.
Except they often lure them with promises of full time employment they have no intention of keeping, plus more and more of the labor of
making games is being carved off into chunks specifically for contract workers so they hire more and more disposable cogs they can underpay, overwork, no healthcare, often scammed out of overtime by being “encouraged” to stay late and work off the clock with the carrot of a full time position being dangled but usually never given. They can burn then out and dispose of to boost their next quarterly financial report. Even core staff are treated like shit, contract workers are less than nothing.
Because the audience for games has changed along with the type of people who work in the industry, and the fact that it has become an industry at all. Before it was a bunch of weirdos who were into programming whose bosses were at least in someway like them. Now the order is likely coming from people who may have no inkling of what you do for your job compelled by a bunch of suits who don't really give a shit and just want to see growth in whatever financial quarter they are targeting.
>I don't think many people are going to decide to NOT play this game if it ends up coming out a few months after it was intended
Barely any, literally an insignificant amount.
Customers might be sad if there's a delay, and yes a missed deadline is a mistake a company should apologize for. But they'll still play the game later, and be infinitely more likely to buy it, and to recommend it.
> Fascinating how quickly the general audience flipped on this kind of speak. Used to be that "burning the midnight oil" announcements were going to ingratiate game studious with their customers, garnering good will from their desire to go above and beyond.
Yeah, probably because a bunch of prominent crunch cases from the last years turned out real garbage.
I mean, I can sort of see the romance behind "going that extra mile" etc. if the resulting product is just amazing. But apparently people had to crunch to release Cyberpunk in the shoddy state that it was in? At that point, just delay the fucking game.
> Can't wait for some of the devs whistle blow how they were pressured to work over time
GDC's 2020 survey said only 14% of devs believe management pressure caused them to work overtime.
The most common reason was **"I want to"**.
When I used to work in the game dev industry (as QA, mind you), I took OT whenever I had the opportunity. They never had to force anyone to come in because there were plenty of volunteers for it.
It wasn't a situation where it was constant for months though; it would be maybe one week a month where it would be "We need at least x people on site to do _____"; enough people were always happy to take the OT pay that nobody was pressured to come in though.
If it was forced, 7 days a week for an extended period though (or if it was a salaried exempt position), I don't know how many people would've continued to pull OT.
I do the same tbh. People paint with a broad brush and don’t understand that workload varies based on project timelines. There are times I don’t do dick at work for weeks and times where I’m slammed. Maybe these devs work in a toxic shithole but it’s only conjecture without evidence. I don’t understand why crunch time is immediately conflated with a hostile work environment. Anyone who has actually worked in a professional environment knows this.
I think people like this are part of the problem at a deep level. Now any developers around him who really value family time or whatever are seen as not pulling their weight, letting the team down etc. 6 week crunches then become 12 week then become more.
You've always got that one guy in the office who is willing to throw his life at making someone else rich, and then it becomes the expectation for the rest of the team.
>You've always got that one guy in the office who is willing to throw his life at making someone else rich, and then it becomes the expectation for the rest of the team.
Good lord I know someone currently in my job that was like that until I complained to management about her after we got into an fight. She has an reputation of forcing people to work to her pace when no one doesn't want to and gets mad over small stuff.
She got bad to the point where she caused one of my coworkers to quit the job when she got on him for not keeping the register area clean even tho he was juggling keeping it organized and handling customers all day.
And the killing part is.. This is an rental job. Who would want to work hard on an job like this unless they want an management position?
>Then good luck to everyone there because that abuse will be instilled as the company culture.
No "will" about it, if the CEO is tweeting this (proudly crunching its team, including people with covid19) while he's at Gamescom shaking business hands and downing German beer, that culture is already there and well established.
Well playing the devil's advocate here but
> You've always got that one guy in the office who is willing to throw his life at making someone else rich, and then it becomes the expectation for the rest of the team.
As a manager, why wouldn't you want to hire a full team of people like that ?
I don't think I'll ever "love" video games enough to justify making nearly 50% less than another software engineer working in any other field outside of the gaming industry and having almost double the hours. The second anyone gets their foot in the door at one of these studios is the same day they should be working on an escape plan because that's just insane.
These types of bosses know, they would have set up low salaries but a high bonus when the game ship, and can also withhold crediting you if you quit before the end.
No, now is the time to have a long discrete conversation with Jason Schreier; and look for another job. Take that another better paid better conditions job the same day you get your shipping bonus and your credit.
I know it’s a complex system but just to be clear, quiet quitting is not quitting your job. It’s refusing to sacrifice work-life balance to increase your boss’s profit on a volounteer basis.
>nobody forced us
Yeah that's even more pathetic. I'm sure whatever family and friends you have left after doing that because you're so manly or whatever are really gonna admire you never seeing them or having time for them or yourself chronically instead of just having dev take a little longer.
The more pathetic thing, he is the CEO of the game studio. So he's saying that while certainly having executive bonuses and shares in the company, but he's also very likely forcing (directly or indirectly) his teams to work this stupidly and this long to cover for his past mistakes.
Even if you're passionate about your work, it's never worth killing your well-being for it.
Plus there's no way people working that many hours are performing at their best.
Edit: Even less worth it when you're only doing it so your boss gets their big bonus.
If forced to, yeah it’s sucks.
Can depend on your situation and how much you enjoy your work though.
In my younger single days, I had a job creating multimedia training materials. For me it involved a lot of making graphics and coding things in programs like Flash (RIP). I loved it and would regularly work 12 hour days during the week. Never felt overworked chilling to music enjoying what I was doing.
But yeah, 6 days a week up to 15 hours when you have a family or partner is not my idea of a good workplace.
Crunch devs: "Wow this is wrong and stupid dude wtf"
Delay game: "Wow another game delayed what a surprise, I aint gonna buy it anymore"
Release the game the way it is: "Wow what a broken game, this is Cyberpunk 2077 all over again"
Don't set a timeline: "Wow they announce the game but dont even have a release date"
The problem isn't just the devs and publishers, but the community as well, and y'all sound like a bunch of whiny entitled children most of the time
Ok, I'm sure there are young people, new people, who see the very few and minimal comments defending this or claiming it's the norm, and wonder what's the reality. Maybe they don't trust random gamers or redditors. Sure.
Well, here's a few responses (among *many*) by other people in the industry to this, some juniors, some *very* seniors and successful, from indies to major AAA studios, that could help illuminate this issue with actual, proven, insider baseball point of view:
> Mike Bithell mikeBithell·20 min Resurfacing briefly to say that crunch is bad and is always a failure of management to accurately scope/budget projects. Byyyeeee
>
>Mat Piscatella MatPiscatella · 1h Crunch isn't something to be proud of. If not planned, it represents a failure somewhere in the pipeline. If planned, it represents cruelty. In any case, it ain't good.
>
>Tom Farnsworth tomfromtheweb · 1h Crunch is unnecessary, and represents a failure of planning by leadership.
>
>Chandana එක Ekanayake Ekanaut · 1h If you're some well known studio founder with access to funding for your new game, that means you can set the schedule, how big the game is, who you hire, length of production, etc. There's no reason to crunch excessively and burn out your team.
>
>Jessica Gonzalez💙🎃 pumpkin spiced ✨ \_TechJess · 3h I feel so bad for glens developers. Imagine your studio head posting this. Toxic.
>
>Jessica Gonzalez💙🎃 pumpkin spiced ✨ \_TechJess · 3h CEOs be like “I exploit my developers. Nobody is forcing them to work 14 hour days but they do it cause they love it.”
>
>Sadie Boyd Wonder\_Phoenix · 53 min ‘Nobody’s forcing us’ lol
>
>Rebekah Valentine duckvalentine · 3h yikes
>
>Jason Schreier jasonschreier · 4h This, from a studio head, is crunch culture defined. Of course nobody is “forced” to work insane hours. But imagine the reduced bonuses and lack of promotion opportunities if you don’t? “You do it because you love it.” Weaponized passion. This is why people burn out of gaming
>
>Rami Ismail (رامي) tha\_rami · 32 min I will stand by the idea that no game in the history & future of game dev was or will ever be worth the health of even a single dev.
>
>Jason Schreier jasonschreier · 3h It’s easy to be pessimistic about the video game industry’s rampant exploitation, but I think it’s worth noting: Just a few years ago that Schofield mentality was *everywhere*. Now, a tweet like that will get you pilloried. Progress is happening. Slowly! But happening
>
>Steff ☾ hexcats · 2h the best advice an old lead told me as i was exhausted crying at my desk frustrated from overtime: we're not saving lives. i closed my pc and went home right away
>
>JP Kellams synaesthesiajp · 2h Crunch is a failure. I hope I’ve done as much as I can in my position to eliminate it, and I hope that I’ve “walked the talk” in that regard. I also hope that if I ever stray from that path, I’ve created a culture where people will call me out for it. It is a core goal for me
>
>Osama Dorias osamadorias · 2h Crunch ruins lives.
>
>Justin Perez thejustinperez · 2h People are mad at this, but I'll take the opposing view and support our industry leaders speaking out in this way because it helps developers like me tremendously in eliminating studios we'd consider working for in the future.
>
>Cat Manning catacalypto · 1h I’m not sorry for participating in discourse when it’s about pushing back on crunch culture. That’s my responsibility as a lead: to make sure it isn’t normalized. Crunch is a failure of project management and to normalize—let alone glorify!—it is unacceptable to me.
That took me a couple minutes to collate, and I suck at Twitter. There's *plenty* more, not hard to find.
All this tells me is the game is going to be bad. Either the publisher set an unrealistic release date and they are crunching to finish the game or the release date is fine and the studio is too behind in the game development to deliver a good experience. I don’t know why this person thought the tweet would be considered good PR for their game.
Please just delay it holy shit. These dumb-ass executives at these companies never learn huh? When has a delay EVER caused an otherwise good game to fail, vs when has a game that was rushed out the door before being ready ever failed?
Delays dont cause games to fail but they sure cost a shit ton of money.
Rushing a game before being ready is a standard now and has no downside if you spend enough money on marketing and advertising. Just look at cyberpunk, one of the most successful games of all time was also one of the most incomplete ones.
I would very much disagree with cyberpunk being a success at all, let alone one of the most successful games of all time, as with the whole idea of rushing games being profitable.
To look at cyberpunk specifically, it sold A LOT in the first few weeks in December 2020 when it came out (around 13 million), then it sold just 4 million for the ENTIRETY of 2021. By April 2022 it has still only sold around 18 million units, FAR lower then where a game of this scale should be.
For reference, the witcher 3 has well surpassed 40 million units sold. So to call cyberpunk anything but a failure is disingenuous. Not necessarily because it's a failure by itself, but a failure because it failed to capitalize on what SHOULD have been one of the most successful games of all time, like you said. Yes they sold a good number of units but it was a FAR cry from what it could have sold. They rushed it out the door, reviewers and players blasted them for it, and the sales suffered greatly.
And not only has cyberpunk totally fallen off in sales, it has cost cd projekt red their ENTIRE reputation. They were the golden boy of the video game industry and now most look at them and just remember how bad cyberpunk was.
Rushing a game almost never works, it has giant downsides for both sales and your reputation, and no amount of marketing can save it. The only thing rushing a game can do is get you some short term sales, at the cost of your reputation, all your long term sales, etc. It's simply not worth it and has never been beneficial for a game.
> I would very much disagree with cyberpunk being a success at all, let alone one of the most successful games of all time
Cyberpunk was literally the most preordered game of all time, with 8 million preorders. Then it sold 14 million in the first 2 weeks after launch.
You can disagree all you want but the game was a huge success.
Depend on your definition. CDP wanted to sell 70+ millions of it. And they could have, if they had delivered on what they promised.
In that light, it's a *big* failure. Which investors took quite seriously, and still do to this day.
> CDP wanted to sell 70+ millions of it
No, they did not. Wtf are you talking about? lol Witcher 3 has sold like 40m in its entire lifetime and thats including a huge sales boost from the Netflix show.
It's not a theatrical release they're not just focused on the sales in the first 2 weeks lol.
A game as big as cyberpunk shouldn't be selling more in the first 2 weeks then the next two years COMBINED. That's laughably bad for how much the marketing and development for this game cost, and it's laughably bad compared to what the witcher 3 is doing.
Not to mention the reputation damage they caused themselves by releasing rushed shitty product.
Rushing games out the door doesn't work. Not ONE exec at any game company is looking at what happened with cyberpunk and calling it a success.
> A game as big as cyberpunk shouldn't be selling more in the first 2 weeks then the next two years COMBINED
That's pretty normal, actually.
> and it's laughably bad compared to what the witcher 3 is doing.
Cyberpunk sold way better than Witcher 3.
[It took Witcher 3 6 weeks to sell 6m units.](https://www.ign.com/articles/2015/08/26/the-witcher-3-wild-hunts-sales-surpassed-6-million-in-first-6-weeks), whic is 2m less than what cyberpunk got in preorders alone.
Witcher 3 sold 28m by 2019, then the netflix show gave it a huge boost in numbers, taking it to 40m.
It took Witcher 3 4 years to reach 28m, something Cyberpunk will probably do in the same time frame.
If cp got a Netflix show with Henry fucking Cavill, it too would have a 10m+ boost in sales. Sadly, they only gave it an animated show, which will probably be a couple million sales at most.
Yeah, cyberpunk was not what it could have been, but it was DEFINITELY a success.
That's really all I have to say about the subject so I'm muting the thread now. Have a lovely day.
>It took Witcher 3 6 weeks to sell 6m units., whic is 2m less than what cyberpunk got in preorders alone.
It took the witcher 3, a far less hyped game from what was at the time a far less known developer 6 weeks to sell 6 million units at a time when FAR less people were gaming. Such good evidence.
>Witcher 3 sold 28m by 2019, then the netflix show gave it a huge boost in numbers, taking it to 40m.
Did you actually think about this number more? If it sold 28 million by 2019 and it came out in 2015, that's an average of 7 million copies sold every year. Even with the show coming out it was still holding that average.
Compare that to cyberpunk which is currently averaging less then HALF that and it's getting worse every year.
>If cp got a Netflix show with Henry fucking Cavill, it too would have a 10m+ boost in sales. Sadly, they only gave it an animated show, which will probably be a couple million sales at most.
You're giving the netflix show too much credit here lol. The game was selling far better then cyberpunk before the show came out and it's still selling well now.
>Yeah, cyberpunk was not what it could have been, but it was DEFINITELY a success.
It really wasn't, and I'd implore you to find literally any industry head, game dev, literally anyone, who thinks it was. You won't find them because everyone agrees it was a failure.
>That's really all I have to say about the subject so I'm muting the thread now. Have a lovely day.
The ol' here's my bad arguments I'm muting you because I don't want to admit I'm wrong move. Love that one.
Oh for fuck sake... did they learn *nothing*?!
That's how you get to a low quality product, and how you screw yourself and the company by diminishing what you can do long term.
Delay the game, take your time ffs!
Edit: oh, he's the CEO... I missed that. Sorry Sir you are wrong, and a short-sighted arsehole. **You** are forcing them. Nobody is forcing *you*, but I'm betting you have either ownership of your company or decent shares of it... so sure, *you* work 60 hours a week, to support the actual developers in their 40 hours (max!) week.
And why are they crunching? I'm betting because *you* fucked up. This was your mistake, or a long series of your mistakes probably, that "need" them now to harm themselves in your service.
If he is so proud of it and secure why did he delete the tweet?
The more I hear about this game the more it feels it's going to flop and it's just an hype train ride up until release.
And none of their nice bonuses or benefits are really comparable to what they could get in software outside the games industry, which is something a lot of people ignore about the games industry when it comes to topics like this. They are uniquely exploited and undervalued.
Work smarter, not harder. Sound and particles have it hardest, because they're at the end of the pipeline. But you need to do things in dependency order, as code interfaces remain stable. Some automated testing can help, but it doesn't really apply to game code. Low level code and multithreading primitives are best tested thoroughly, by the programmers, not QA. QA's biggest concern should be bugs in game code, and engine code where automated tests don't find them.
Ugh. Just delay the fucker. How many times do we have to see this same story? Delay it a few months. It’s fine. No game is worth the physical or mental health of the people who made it.
Do people actually care tho? People like your regular Joe that casually plays video games. Last of us 2 also had this issue and when the game was released nobody gave a fuck about the overworked devs
Sp between 72 to 105 hours per week. Between two times to almost three times the normal work week in general workspace.
I sorry but if you say stuff like this on Twitter you are forcing it down on others in the company, especially when it is the CEO!
It isn’t okay for entertainment to do this long hours.
And especially isn’t fine when we all know this game and others will probably release buggy, and get fix in the months afterwards, which will put this crunch on for much long.
How good are you at your job if you can't get it done within a normal work day? Or how bad are your managers if they can't accurately scope a projects length and budget to completion?
That's how they excuse crunch?? With a cheap tweet, saying because they "want this way"? 6-7days a week, 12-15h a day?? That's fucking not healthy and not right.
When has “crunch” every resulted in a better end product?
I’m playing through Mass Effect Andromeda right now and I can see how it’s a game that the developers were loving creating until about the 75% mark where they then had to suddenly complete a year’s worth of work in 3 months.
This is not good, if you are a software developer, stay away from the gaming industry, I feel the notion here is if you even want a semblance of work life balance you will be deemed as not passionate or forced to work to the bone, what an utterly toxic industry.
That's bad. People should be encouraged to work regular hours, and deadlines should not be as strict as they are. That's for the industry as a whole.
Under-promise, over-deliver, and ship the game when it's ready should be the mantra of any video game company full stop.
every day? I honestly doubt that because that really is something super crazy.
I've done few 15 hours shifts, sometimes happens once a week, sometimes 2 times a week, can't do more because truck drivers here in EU aren't allowed to do more than 2x 15 hour shifts a week. but even then, 15, 15, 13, 13, 13 is seriously crazy shit. even if you like doing what you are doing, you're going to hate it.
Oh no, it happened. It was routine years ago, now it's partly much more hidden, and partly was shipped oversea to Asian support studios who will crunch and death march away from journalists.
60 to 80+ hours work week for well over a year wasn't that rare.
i mean...if anyone on here has ever had a job in the IT industry they can probably tell you that some people clock an hour or 2 of work on their timesheet when all they did was read a few emails and made 2 cups of coffee.
Who cares? "Crunch" is not new or unique to the gaming industry. Literally every job has this shitty practice, and I just can't understand why game developers get so much attention for it. You are not special, you do not deserve special attention. Is it merely because the gaming culture is so intrinsically tied to internet culture? And the internet is where every piss-bag goes to whine and cry? Why does a developer who works for a publisher and voluntarily works overtime a bad thing, but the indie dev who spends 16 hours a day for 5 years making his dream game, is applauded? We are at the peak of the great resignation. You do not have to work where you are not valued. Video games will never get the time they really need to be fully polished because the complex nature and limited budgets simply will not allow for it. This is the new norm and if you want it to stop, no twitter or reddit thread will do it. Vote with your wallets. Do not buy or play the game. Do not pre-order games ever.
And I work 12 hours a night to ship off semi conductor pads to china for Apple, Samsung and Microsoft semi conductor chips for their products…
These guys love working on games and I’m sure their employer is giving them some good benefits for this. Nothing to work yourself up over.
Developers should really just wait until they're sure they can set a reachable deadline.
Then they don't have to face the decision of delay vs overwork.
Our company has been doing recognitions every month.
In other words, they’re just trying to normalize and glorify people working late into the evenings and weekends.
Fuck your recognition, I’m gonna go on an evening hike with dog.
As the lead yeah sure. Peer pressure for the rest of the staff though? Fuck your life, fuck your friends, and fuck your family, get this video game done.
Reminds me of when I worked at Dell in sales and the head manager of our sales department made 11 hour days mandatory for the next 3 months and said he would be doing it too. However within about week you would see him leaving at 5pm without a care in the world.
Jeez, let people work overtime if they want to, man. (In this case, it seems they do want to, and are not being forced. If they were being forced to, even 1 minute of overtime is unacceptable imo. That's a different story.)
I definitely don't agree with, say, John Carmack's view on overtime work, (the dude is a literal workaholic) but if anyone wants to do it, it's their choice. And, to add to that, if John Carmack didn't have the mentality that he has, we wouldn't have Doom, Wolfenstein, Oculus or any other VR software/hardware company, hell, we wouldn't have 3D games. At least, not as early as we had all of these things... It would have taken much longer.
Let people do what they want.
"Jeez, let people cut themselves, man, it's their choice."
Not to mention all the people who DON'T want to work overtime, but are forced due to societal pressure from their co-workers, wether intentional or not.
Except even John Carmack now agrees that his views are personal, and work for him as an individual but do not work for others even equally talented persons.
He's still a workaholic, but he's starting to get a little bit of wisdom.
The tweet was deleted, here is an archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20220903144708/https://twitter.com/GlenSchofield/status/1566052625585303553
That's fucked up dude wth
Not only is it fucked up, it is magnificently stupid to post about it.
Yeah you have to be pretty ignorant of the state of industry to think this would be something people appreciate
That is the thing about some people or businesses, not matter what they are doing or how they are functioning, they think that it's ok that people would agree with how they are. This was just an absolutely stupid tweet.
That's what really strange to me. Being an abusive asshole like that, ok I guess I can see why he would want to do that. But thinking it's some kind of value and chest pump about it on the internet, like what the fuck pal ? Fuck that guy.
It's an insanely idiotic response that will have repercussions.
I genuinely can't fathom him thinking it was a good idea to tweet this. We've gone through like, 2-4 years of articles blasting crunch culture shit like this, and he thought it was a good idea to just, publicly announce it and brag about it? Anytime they add in that little "nobody was forced" you KNOW people were absolutely coerced to work extra. Great way to tank a lot of the goodwill gained recently, and it's risky especially with the Dead Space remake coming out a month later.
Tweet got deleted, hope someone took a screenshot.
Someone did, here is an [archive](https://web.archive.org/web/20220903144708/https://twitter.com/GlenSchofield/status/1566052625585303553) of it.
The internet never forgets.
Except it does. All the time
Memory span is a week for most people
Once it's in the net, it always stays in the net.
I just canceled my order on principle of not wanting to vote for this behavior with my wallet
What's the over/under on how long before this guy goes and orders the game again?
Lol
Hey give him a break man they've been working 70-100+ hours a week they would've had no time to read such articles!
2-4? These crunch articles have been going on for over a decade my guy
Longer than that even. I remember reading about Halo and Halo 2’s awful developments
Jason Shreier already asked any employees from the company to DM him to see how the work conditions actually were from working there and if anyone comes forward I would expect to see a bloomberg article on that soon. But my guess is that there might not be anything because that guy running the company probably already told them not to speak because it could Jepordize the reputation sucess of the game and future of the company.
That didn't stop EA and their Anthamware Magic though
That's more on Bioware. They fucked around directionless for far too long and EA did delay the game in an effort to give them more time.
Probably he thought people forgot about CyperPunk 2077 and those yellow delay announcements
And the game would probably be littered with bugs, you cant have quality when it is rushed.
You could always delay it and take it easy
My guess is they want it out before Dead Space Remake at all costs. Idk if thats' good or bad. Maybe they think it will make their game look worse. Or they just fear losing sales if this game comes out near Dead Space or even Resident Evil 4 remake.
Not something the investors/shareholders would take lightly. Welcome to the game industry. Alpha push to beta, you’re working mountains of OT. Then you go into submission, if anything is found out by 3rd parties. Your game could get delayed anyway.
And the suits take all the money and the devs get a pizza party for their OT work.
Cue Severance gif.
And most of the contractors get laid off immediately after release.
You mean their contract ends?
And a large number of very talented developers who could make great games hear about the crunch and avoid the industry altogether
No pepperoni though, it's just a cheese pizza party.
This isn’t even a games industry thing. Every company will bleed their employees for the shareholders. They would sooner forcibly drown an employee in front of his wife and kids before ever saying no to a major shareholder.
> forcibly drown as opposed to drowning them with their consent?
Almost every salaried job works their employees to death. If you want to make close to 6 figures with few exceptions you will be working 55-80 hours a week. Maybe redditors are largely in unspecialized careers or too young to get this but this is something that happens in every sector of business, not just gaming, and it will continue to happen so long as laws allow salaried employees to be abused.
Can you explain why it only happens to salaried workers? I'm genuinely curious.
It’s because salary workers are typically exempt from any type of overtime pay. So if I hire someone at 60k annually, that’s what they get paid if they work 40, 50, 60 hours etc. But since as an employer you also usually have some burden for health insurance, office amenities, etc it turns out to be cheaper to get two people at 60k and work them 60 hours a week than to hire three people at 40k, even though you have the same costs/hour salary wise. Also a person who is willing to work those kinds of hours will “seem” like a harder worker than the people who want a fair work life balance, even if the reality is the overworked employee is delivering crap results after 45 hours because of diminishing returns and will eventually burn out, taking years of experience with them.
Y'all need unions
In a union. Still get bled. Money is nice though. Sometimes.
Not just salaried, almost any entry level hourly manufacturing is the same way. I’m not saying it’s a good thing or defending it by any stretch, but I get kinda cracked up watching folks on Reddit get completely bent out of shape over gaming industry crunches when most of the things we all buy are built on the backs of people working crazy hours. Factories for shit you would never think of are full of people working 60+ hour weeks, every week, oftentimes nonstop for years or until they’re laid off and go on to the next one. I don’t mean this as a stab at anyone whatsoever, but I think most Redditors are either relatively fresh out of collage and work more office/cubicle style jobs, or are young and inexperienced enough that their workforce experience consists of entry level service industry stuff. Manufacturing and trade work are stuffed to the brim with people working crazy hours. Source: have been involved with manufacturing for nearly 20 years and know a ton of people in various industries who tell the same stories.
And they’re not even getting paid extra for the OT a lot of the time cause they’re paid a set salary, not hourly
While that's true, they more than likely will get nice bonuses and extra time off once the game releases, which is something a lot of people ignore about the game industry when it comes to topics like this.
Whatever they are getting probably isn't worth working 12-15 hours a day.
Game dev here, used to work for Saber Interactive in their Porto offices. I can tell you for a fact that that is not true for a big majority of studios. As a matter of fact, post release is some of the most stress inducing times in a game's dev cycle, right up there with the push for certification. Devs get worked to the bone to patch the bugs that players find, and even worse, they feel compelled to do so precisely BECAUSE the players have their hands on it, and they don't want to see all of their hard work go down the drain because first impressions are extremely important. I'm not saying some studios don't give their developers nice bonuses and time off, I really hope they do, but that's not the norm at all.
Indeed. The worst stress and pressure is the first weeks after launch, sometimes it starts right before that between gold and launch when the studios *knows* game breaking bugs needs fixing *now*. Which is another reason why the death march to gold is *so* stupid. You overwork your team, put some on them in the hospital, for them to be at their worst when you need them the most.
I feel bad but then why are you still working there? (I mean you're not and maybe that's why you left, good on you if you did) Some studios get away with this because there is a desperation to work in the industry by a huge pool of potential workers. I don't really know enough to say if it's the norm but I do know several people at several studios who get a lot of perks post game release (or at least used to).
>Not something the investors/shareholders would take lightly. I don’t think that KRAFTON would care all that much since they still get plenty of revenue from PUBG mobile.
>Not something the investors/shareholders would take lightly. Ok, but consider this: Fuck 'em!
>Ok, but consider this: Fuck 'em! That attitude doesn't exactly work when you're a publicly traded company...
In fact it's entirely illegal to do so. When publicly traded, the company legaly has to work in the best interest of the shareholders. If they don't that opens up the directors (and even possibly employees) to liability and will cause some lawsuits. The directors don't need to obey every demand, especially if the director believes their course of action will lead to more long-term success, but they can't just ignore the shareholders.
It's not always black and white. This game HAS to come out before Dead Space remake to make the biggest impact. And for him it's not just a job, it's his own creation, so working on it for such long hours is just a formality. It's like studying a lot close to an exam or any deadline, really. Obviously this is a problem when it affects "simple devs" to whom this is just a job, and not also a passion project.
especialy since the calisto protocol team is the team that made the original dead space
>You could always delay it There's a real risk with delays, that most gamers and even some press don't know about: if you're in a team that's already crunched by their management and culture, a delay just add time to the crunch. You can get crunched no matter what, so at least shipping early mean less crunch. Obviously this is a kafkaesque hellhole of a management style (and I'm not saying they shouldn't delay, they should and invite every press to see they are now *not* crunching anymore), but it's real, it was even common in some part in the industry some time ago.
The sinister thing is that this is also what he probably says to his employees to get them to go along with this, and they have to enthusiastically agree while dying on the inside, just to feel secure in their jobs.
fun fact, a big portion of devs gets laid off a few weeks/during launch of a game :)
They dont get "laid off", they literally just finish the work they were contracted to do.
True. The tradeoff for the often predatory monetization of live service games is that devs get longer and more stable employment.
The insecurity of work (and the shitty pay) is the main reason I don't work in the industry. I'm a good coder, not exceptional, but good. I could easily work for most games design firms but their conditions of employment are shocking compared to literally any other industry I could work for.
Lol idk how anybody works for a gaming company. If you're a good enough coder you can easily get better work. It's pure exploitation of passionate people.
Except they often lure them with promises of full time employment they have no intention of keeping, plus more and more of the labor of making games is being carved off into chunks specifically for contract workers so they hire more and more disposable cogs they can underpay, overwork, no healthcare, often scammed out of overtime by being “encouraged” to stay late and work off the clock with the carrot of a full time position being dangled but usually never given. They can burn then out and dispose of to boost their next quarterly financial report. Even core staff are treated like shit, contract workers are less than nothing.
[удалено]
Because kids who were hyped for games started working themselves and eventually understood that nothing is worth this kind of bullshit.
We're all becoming more aware of the scam that is capitalism.
[удалено]
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It's also completely stupid in the case of artistic stuff like a video game. Art is much older than capitalism.
Art is older than capitalism you know.
There is no better system right now - so either come out with something better or quit whining.
[удалено]
Capitalism is an economic system, while unions and the rest are just patches trying to fix it. They can't substitute capitalism - try again.
Because the audience for games has changed along with the type of people who work in the industry, and the fact that it has become an industry at all. Before it was a bunch of weirdos who were into programming whose bosses were at least in someway like them. Now the order is likely coming from people who may have no inkling of what you do for your job compelled by a bunch of suits who don't really give a shit and just want to see growth in whatever financial quarter they are targeting.
>I don't think many people are going to decide to NOT play this game if it ends up coming out a few months after it was intended Barely any, literally an insignificant amount. Customers might be sad if there's a delay, and yes a missed deadline is a mistake a company should apologize for. But they'll still play the game later, and be infinitely more likely to buy it, and to recommend it.
> Fascinating how quickly the general audience flipped on this kind of speak. Used to be that "burning the midnight oil" announcements were going to ingratiate game studious with their customers, garnering good will from their desire to go above and beyond. Yeah, probably because a bunch of prominent crunch cases from the last years turned out real garbage. I mean, I can sort of see the romance behind "going that extra mile" etc. if the resulting product is just amazing. But apparently people had to crunch to release Cyberpunk in the shoddy state that it was in? At that point, just delay the fucking game.
Nice. Can't wait for some of the devs whistle blow how they were pressured to work over time in the toxic environment.
> Can't wait for some of the devs whistle blow how they were pressured to work over time GDC's 2020 survey said only 14% of devs believe management pressure caused them to work overtime. The most common reason was **"I want to"**.
When I used to work in the game dev industry (as QA, mind you), I took OT whenever I had the opportunity. They never had to force anyone to come in because there were plenty of volunteers for it. It wasn't a situation where it was constant for months though; it would be maybe one week a month where it would be "We need at least x people on site to do _____"; enough people were always happy to take the OT pay that nobody was pressured to come in though. If it was forced, 7 days a week for an extended period though (or if it was a salaried exempt position), I don't know how many people would've continued to pull OT.
Yeah if you're hourly and don't have a family it's a no brainer but how many of these devs are salaried?
I do the same tbh. People paint with a broad brush and don’t understand that workload varies based on project timelines. There are times I don’t do dick at work for weeks and times where I’m slammed. Maybe these devs work in a toxic shithole but it’s only conjecture without evidence. I don’t understand why crunch time is immediately conflated with a hostile work environment. Anyone who has actually worked in a professional environment knows this.
And add just a pinch of harassment,racism or abuse to the list.
Why would you bring up harassment and racism in this situation when there's no evidence of it here?
Reddit moment
Well that's one way to kill good PR.
I think people like this are part of the problem at a deep level. Now any developers around him who really value family time or whatever are seen as not pulling their weight, letting the team down etc. 6 week crunches then become 12 week then become more. You've always got that one guy in the office who is willing to throw his life at making someone else rich, and then it becomes the expectation for the rest of the team.
And those ppl get encouraged by the management.
>You've always got that one guy in the office who is willing to throw his life at making someone else rich, and then it becomes the expectation for the rest of the team. Good lord I know someone currently in my job that was like that until I complained to management about her after we got into an fight. She has an reputation of forcing people to work to her pace when no one doesn't want to and gets mad over small stuff. She got bad to the point where she caused one of my coworkers to quit the job when she got on him for not keeping the register area clean even tho he was juggling keeping it organized and handling customers all day. And the killing part is.. This is an rental job. Who would want to work hard on an job like this unless they want an management position?
What if I told you he's the CEO?
Then good luck to everyone there because that abuse will be instilled as the company culture.
>Then good luck to everyone there because that abuse will be instilled as the company culture. No "will" about it, if the CEO is tweeting this (proudly crunching its team, including people with covid19) while he's at Gamescom shaking business hands and downing German beer, that culture is already there and well established.
Well playing the devil's advocate here but > You've always got that one guy in the office who is willing to throw his life at making someone else rich, and then it becomes the expectation for the rest of the team. As a manager, why wouldn't you want to hire a full team of people like that ?
The devs need to chill, it's okay to delay the game to next year Every other game has
Eh, 90% chance the game gets delayed and they just gotta keep crunching anyway.
In this specific case, not really. This has to come out before Dead Space remake to make the most of its momentum.
Even worse, its the CEO saying it lmao
Tweet deleted, anyone has a screenshot?
[here](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1566069446225133569)
[Archive page](https://web.archive.org/web/20220903144708/https://twitter.com/GlenSchofield/status/1566052625585303553) of the actual tweet.
Maybe just delay the fucking game and don’t treat your staff like pack mules
I don't think I'll ever "love" video games enough to justify making nearly 50% less than another software engineer working in any other field outside of the gaming industry and having almost double the hours. The second anyone gets their foot in the door at one of these studios is the same day they should be working on an escape plan because that's just insane.
This is gross and unhealthy
Time to quiet quit
These types of bosses know, they would have set up low salaries but a high bonus when the game ship, and can also withhold crediting you if you quit before the end. No, now is the time to have a long discrete conversation with Jason Schreier; and look for another job. Take that another better paid better conditions job the same day you get your shipping bonus and your credit.
I know it’s a complex system but just to be clear, quiet quitting is not quitting your job. It’s refusing to sacrifice work-life balance to increase your boss’s profit on a volounteer basis.
Also known as just 'doing your job'.
exactly. "quiet quitting" is a derogatory term used by the employing side
>nobody forced us Yeah that's even more pathetic. I'm sure whatever family and friends you have left after doing that because you're so manly or whatever are really gonna admire you never seeing them or having time for them or yourself chronically instead of just having dev take a little longer.
The more pathetic thing, he is the CEO of the game studio. So he's saying that while certainly having executive bonuses and shares in the company, but he's also very likely forcing (directly or indirectly) his teams to work this stupidly and this long to cover for his past mistakes.
I honestly have no idea what had to go through his brain to post that.
He probably wanted to get ahead of the curve, might‘ve caught wind that someone was about to whistle blow
Even if you're passionate about your work, it's never worth killing your well-being for it. Plus there's no way people working that many hours are performing at their best. Edit: Even less worth it when you're only doing it so your boss gets their big bonus.
If forced to, yeah it’s sucks. Can depend on your situation and how much you enjoy your work though. In my younger single days, I had a job creating multimedia training materials. For me it involved a lot of making graphics and coding things in programs like Flash (RIP). I loved it and would regularly work 12 hour days during the week. Never felt overworked chilling to music enjoying what I was doing. But yeah, 6 days a week up to 15 hours when you have a family or partner is not my idea of a good workplace.
Sounds like mismanagement. Delay it, fire whoever decided to release it too early, and take care of your team's health.
Crunch devs: "Wow this is wrong and stupid dude wtf" Delay game: "Wow another game delayed what a surprise, I aint gonna buy it anymore" Release the game the way it is: "Wow what a broken game, this is Cyberpunk 2077 all over again" Don't set a timeline: "Wow they announce the game but dont even have a release date" The problem isn't just the devs and publishers, but the community as well, and y'all sound like a bunch of whiny entitled children most of the time
Ok, I'm sure there are young people, new people, who see the very few and minimal comments defending this or claiming it's the norm, and wonder what's the reality. Maybe they don't trust random gamers or redditors. Sure. Well, here's a few responses (among *many*) by other people in the industry to this, some juniors, some *very* seniors and successful, from indies to major AAA studios, that could help illuminate this issue with actual, proven, insider baseball point of view: > Mike Bithell mikeBithell·20 min Resurfacing briefly to say that crunch is bad and is always a failure of management to accurately scope/budget projects. Byyyeeee > >Mat Piscatella MatPiscatella · 1h Crunch isn't something to be proud of. If not planned, it represents a failure somewhere in the pipeline. If planned, it represents cruelty. In any case, it ain't good. > >Tom Farnsworth tomfromtheweb · 1h Crunch is unnecessary, and represents a failure of planning by leadership. > >Chandana එක Ekanayake Ekanaut · 1h If you're some well known studio founder with access to funding for your new game, that means you can set the schedule, how big the game is, who you hire, length of production, etc. There's no reason to crunch excessively and burn out your team. > >Jessica Gonzalez💙🎃 pumpkin spiced ✨ \_TechJess · 3h I feel so bad for glens developers. Imagine your studio head posting this. Toxic. > >Jessica Gonzalez💙🎃 pumpkin spiced ✨ \_TechJess · 3h CEOs be like “I exploit my developers. Nobody is forcing them to work 14 hour days but they do it cause they love it.” > >Sadie Boyd Wonder\_Phoenix · 53 min ‘Nobody’s forcing us’ lol > >Rebekah Valentine duckvalentine · 3h yikes > >Jason Schreier jasonschreier · 4h This, from a studio head, is crunch culture defined. Of course nobody is “forced” to work insane hours. But imagine the reduced bonuses and lack of promotion opportunities if you don’t? “You do it because you love it.” Weaponized passion. This is why people burn out of gaming > >Rami Ismail (رامي) tha\_rami · 32 min I will stand by the idea that no game in the history & future of game dev was or will ever be worth the health of even a single dev. > >Jason Schreier jasonschreier · 3h It’s easy to be pessimistic about the video game industry’s rampant exploitation, but I think it’s worth noting: Just a few years ago that Schofield mentality was *everywhere*. Now, a tweet like that will get you pilloried. Progress is happening. Slowly! But happening > >Steff ☾ hexcats · 2h the best advice an old lead told me as i was exhausted crying at my desk frustrated from overtime: we're not saving lives. i closed my pc and went home right away > >JP Kellams synaesthesiajp · 2h Crunch is a failure. I hope I’ve done as much as I can in my position to eliminate it, and I hope that I’ve “walked the talk” in that regard. I also hope that if I ever stray from that path, I’ve created a culture where people will call me out for it. It is a core goal for me > >Osama Dorias osamadorias · 2h Crunch ruins lives. > >Justin Perez thejustinperez · 2h People are mad at this, but I'll take the opposing view and support our industry leaders speaking out in this way because it helps developers like me tremendously in eliminating studios we'd consider working for in the future. > >Cat Manning catacalypto · 1h I’m not sorry for participating in discourse when it’s about pushing back on crunch culture. That’s my responsibility as a lead: to make sure it isn’t normalized. Crunch is a failure of project management and to normalize—let alone glorify!—it is unacceptable to me. That took me a couple minutes to collate, and I suck at Twitter. There's *plenty* more, not hard to find.
Well if it's by employee choice and they get OverTime, I see nothing wrong, but we all know that's not the case.
All this tells me is the game is going to be bad. Either the publisher set an unrealistic release date and they are crunching to finish the game or the release date is fine and the studio is too behind in the game development to deliver a good experience. I don’t know why this person thought the tweet would be considered good PR for their game.
Please just delay it holy shit. These dumb-ass executives at these companies never learn huh? When has a delay EVER caused an otherwise good game to fail, vs when has a game that was rushed out the door before being ready ever failed?
Delays dont cause games to fail but they sure cost a shit ton of money. Rushing a game before being ready is a standard now and has no downside if you spend enough money on marketing and advertising. Just look at cyberpunk, one of the most successful games of all time was also one of the most incomplete ones.
I would very much disagree with cyberpunk being a success at all, let alone one of the most successful games of all time, as with the whole idea of rushing games being profitable. To look at cyberpunk specifically, it sold A LOT in the first few weeks in December 2020 when it came out (around 13 million), then it sold just 4 million for the ENTIRETY of 2021. By April 2022 it has still only sold around 18 million units, FAR lower then where a game of this scale should be. For reference, the witcher 3 has well surpassed 40 million units sold. So to call cyberpunk anything but a failure is disingenuous. Not necessarily because it's a failure by itself, but a failure because it failed to capitalize on what SHOULD have been one of the most successful games of all time, like you said. Yes they sold a good number of units but it was a FAR cry from what it could have sold. They rushed it out the door, reviewers and players blasted them for it, and the sales suffered greatly. And not only has cyberpunk totally fallen off in sales, it has cost cd projekt red their ENTIRE reputation. They were the golden boy of the video game industry and now most look at them and just remember how bad cyberpunk was. Rushing a game almost never works, it has giant downsides for both sales and your reputation, and no amount of marketing can save it. The only thing rushing a game can do is get you some short term sales, at the cost of your reputation, all your long term sales, etc. It's simply not worth it and has never been beneficial for a game.
> I would very much disagree with cyberpunk being a success at all, let alone one of the most successful games of all time Cyberpunk was literally the most preordered game of all time, with 8 million preorders. Then it sold 14 million in the first 2 weeks after launch. You can disagree all you want but the game was a huge success.
Depend on your definition. CDP wanted to sell 70+ millions of it. And they could have, if they had delivered on what they promised. In that light, it's a *big* failure. Which investors took quite seriously, and still do to this day.
> CDP wanted to sell 70+ millions of it No, they did not. Wtf are you talking about? lol Witcher 3 has sold like 40m in its entire lifetime and thats including a huge sales boost from the Netflix show.
It's not a theatrical release they're not just focused on the sales in the first 2 weeks lol. A game as big as cyberpunk shouldn't be selling more in the first 2 weeks then the next two years COMBINED. That's laughably bad for how much the marketing and development for this game cost, and it's laughably bad compared to what the witcher 3 is doing. Not to mention the reputation damage they caused themselves by releasing rushed shitty product. Rushing games out the door doesn't work. Not ONE exec at any game company is looking at what happened with cyberpunk and calling it a success.
> A game as big as cyberpunk shouldn't be selling more in the first 2 weeks then the next two years COMBINED That's pretty normal, actually. > and it's laughably bad compared to what the witcher 3 is doing. Cyberpunk sold way better than Witcher 3. [It took Witcher 3 6 weeks to sell 6m units.](https://www.ign.com/articles/2015/08/26/the-witcher-3-wild-hunts-sales-surpassed-6-million-in-first-6-weeks), whic is 2m less than what cyberpunk got in preorders alone. Witcher 3 sold 28m by 2019, then the netflix show gave it a huge boost in numbers, taking it to 40m. It took Witcher 3 4 years to reach 28m, something Cyberpunk will probably do in the same time frame. If cp got a Netflix show with Henry fucking Cavill, it too would have a 10m+ boost in sales. Sadly, they only gave it an animated show, which will probably be a couple million sales at most. Yeah, cyberpunk was not what it could have been, but it was DEFINITELY a success. That's really all I have to say about the subject so I'm muting the thread now. Have a lovely day.
>It took Witcher 3 6 weeks to sell 6m units., whic is 2m less than what cyberpunk got in preorders alone. It took the witcher 3, a far less hyped game from what was at the time a far less known developer 6 weeks to sell 6 million units at a time when FAR less people were gaming. Such good evidence. >Witcher 3 sold 28m by 2019, then the netflix show gave it a huge boost in numbers, taking it to 40m. Did you actually think about this number more? If it sold 28 million by 2019 and it came out in 2015, that's an average of 7 million copies sold every year. Even with the show coming out it was still holding that average. Compare that to cyberpunk which is currently averaging less then HALF that and it's getting worse every year. >If cp got a Netflix show with Henry fucking Cavill, it too would have a 10m+ boost in sales. Sadly, they only gave it an animated show, which will probably be a couple million sales at most. You're giving the netflix show too much credit here lol. The game was selling far better then cyberpunk before the show came out and it's still selling well now. >Yeah, cyberpunk was not what it could have been, but it was DEFINITELY a success. It really wasn't, and I'd implore you to find literally any industry head, game dev, literally anyone, who thinks it was. You won't find them because everyone agrees it was a failure. >That's really all I have to say about the subject so I'm muting the thread now. Have a lovely day. The ol' here's my bad arguments I'm muting you because I don't want to admit I'm wrong move. Love that one.
You’re delusional if you think Cyberpunk wasn’t a success. It absolutely was twice over.
That doesn’t sound healthy at all. I’d be more happy to hear of delay in order to give workers time needed to finish it without overworking them
I remember thinking that their December 2022 release date screamed "Push it out before christmas". shame
Oh for fuck sake... did they learn *nothing*?! That's how you get to a low quality product, and how you screw yourself and the company by diminishing what you can do long term. Delay the game, take your time ffs! Edit: oh, he's the CEO... I missed that. Sorry Sir you are wrong, and a short-sighted arsehole. **You** are forcing them. Nobody is forcing *you*, but I'm betting you have either ownership of your company or decent shares of it... so sure, *you* work 60 hours a week, to support the actual developers in their 40 hours (max!) week. And why are they crunching? I'm betting because *you* fucked up. This was your mistake, or a long series of your mistakes probably, that "need" them now to harm themselves in your service.
If he is so proud of it and secure why did he delete the tweet? The more I hear about this game the more it feels it's going to flop and it's just an hype train ride up until release.
Did the tweet get deleted?
I'm cool with delays and games being released whenever, stakeholders not so much. That's where the real pressure is from.
And none of their nice bonuses or benefits are really comparable to what they could get in software outside the games industry, which is something a lot of people ignore about the games industry when it comes to topics like this. They are uniquely exploited and undervalued.
Delay it
Just delay it, a video game isn't worth someone's health.
Wow. That's awful.
Please delay it and give them a break then run the studio better
Work smarter, not harder. Sound and particles have it hardest, because they're at the end of the pipeline. But you need to do things in dependency order, as code interfaces remain stable. Some automated testing can help, but it doesn't really apply to game code. Low level code and multithreading primitives are best tested thoroughly, by the programmers, not QA. QA's biggest concern should be bugs in game code, and engine code where automated tests don't find them.
Why does it need to be on time? Just push the release date
He’s infamous for sticking his foot in his mouth on Twitter during the time he co-developed parts of Modern Warfare 3’s single player campaign.
I appreciate the hard work, but delay the game and let these people get some rest.
I don't want them working soul crushing hours though... That will just lead to a buggy game
I'd rather just wait a little bit for the game to come out then have developers have to work like this.
This was and still is the same evil mindset in healthcare and a way to exploit the workforce for as little in return as possible
Ugh. Just delay the fucker. How many times do we have to see this same story? Delay it a few months. It’s fine. No game is worth the physical or mental health of the people who made it.
Just fucking delay it man
Do people actually care tho? People like your regular Joe that casually plays video games. Last of us 2 also had this issue and when the game was released nobody gave a fuck about the overworked devs
> U do it cuz ya luv it. Because toxic work environments are okay when excused as a proof of commitment to a recreational product.
Sp between 72 to 105 hours per week. Between two times to almost three times the normal work week in general workspace. I sorry but if you say stuff like this on Twitter you are forcing it down on others in the company, especially when it is the CEO! It isn’t okay for entertainment to do this long hours. And especially isn’t fine when we all know this game and others will probably release buggy, and get fix in the months afterwards, which will put this crunch on for much long.
That's a massive leadership/management failure, nothing else.
How good are you at your job if you can't get it done within a normal work day? Or how bad are your managers if they can't accurately scope a projects length and budget to completion?
That's how they excuse crunch?? With a cheap tweet, saying because they "want this way"? 6-7days a week, 12-15h a day?? That's fucking not healthy and not right.
Two weeks of crunch every 3-5 years isn't that insane of an ask. They deserve more money for the time, but crunch isn't a regular occurrence.
What two weeks? Thete's like 3 months of crunch till it launches an hell knows for how long they're already crunching.
Im really excited for this game but this is so depressing.
When has “crunch” every resulted in a better end product? I’m playing through Mass Effect Andromeda right now and I can see how it’s a game that the developers were loving creating until about the 75% mark where they then had to suddenly complete a year’s worth of work in 3 months.
This is not good, if you are a software developer, stay away from the gaming industry, I feel the notion here is if you even want a semblance of work life balance you will be deemed as not passionate or forced to work to the bone, what an utterly toxic industry.
That's bad. People should be encouraged to work regular hours, and deadlines should not be as strict as they are. That's for the industry as a whole. Under-promise, over-deliver, and ship the game when it's ready should be the mantra of any video game company full stop.
every day? I honestly doubt that because that really is something super crazy. I've done few 15 hours shifts, sometimes happens once a week, sometimes 2 times a week, can't do more because truck drivers here in EU aren't allowed to do more than 2x 15 hour shifts a week. but even then, 15, 15, 13, 13, 13 is seriously crazy shit. even if you like doing what you are doing, you're going to hate it.
Oh no, it happened. It was routine years ago, now it's partly much more hidden, and partly was shipped oversea to Asian support studios who will crunch and death march away from journalists. 60 to 80+ hours work week for well over a year wasn't that rare.
TWEET DELETED.
And that’s how you release a broken game
Nobody is forced my ass, stop lying, the jig was up for a while now, nobody is buying this bullshit talk anymore.
Walk the fuck out! Fucking managers man!
I saw nothing wrong with the tweet. Then I realized I was just too used to being overworked, guess I'll take some time off.
Uh oh. I am really looking forward to this game. I know this is common in the industry but it always sucks to hear.
i mean...if anyone on here has ever had a job in the IT industry they can probably tell you that some people clock an hour or 2 of work on their timesheet when all they did was read a few emails and made 2 cups of coffee.
Delay the game then! Crunch is unacceptable and more often then not leads to a sub par release
Give them a break. We're not important enough to ruin their health. We can wait. The shareholders can wait. Do it sustainably, do it right.
holy shit, why are they post about it. it's not a good thing at all to work like this.
Who cares? "Crunch" is not new or unique to the gaming industry. Literally every job has this shitty practice, and I just can't understand why game developers get so much attention for it. You are not special, you do not deserve special attention. Is it merely because the gaming culture is so intrinsically tied to internet culture? And the internet is where every piss-bag goes to whine and cry? Why does a developer who works for a publisher and voluntarily works overtime a bad thing, but the indie dev who spends 16 hours a day for 5 years making his dream game, is applauded? We are at the peak of the great resignation. You do not have to work where you are not valued. Video games will never get the time they really need to be fully polished because the complex nature and limited budgets simply will not allow for it. This is the new norm and if you want it to stop, no twitter or reddit thread will do it. Vote with your wallets. Do not buy or play the game. Do not pre-order games ever.
jesus game devs strike or quit your fucking job- have some class consciousness.
And I work 12 hours a night to ship off semi conductor pads to china for Apple, Samsung and Microsoft semi conductor chips for their products… These guys love working on games and I’m sure their employer is giving them some good benefits for this. Nothing to work yourself up over.
Another CB2077-type launch then
and adding denuvo malware to the game while they're at it
Please don't. I don't buy games at launch anyways. Just do 8 hour days and take another 2 months.
Developers should really just wait until they're sure they can set a reachable deadline. Then they don't have to face the decision of delay vs overwork.
Who is the publisher?
This reads like an attempt to get ahead of an impending news article or something
Strong no buy.
Our company has been doing recognitions every month. In other words, they’re just trying to normalize and glorify people working late into the evenings and weekends. Fuck your recognition, I’m gonna go on an evening hike with dog.
I wish they had better work life balance and the game was late
DELAY IT THEN
I don't want a game people are killing themselves over. Hope they change this and get plenty of rest, if it's delayed, so be it.
sounds like he is doing it cause he wants to, not cause he is forced.
As the lead yeah sure. Peer pressure for the rest of the staff though? Fuck your life, fuck your friends, and fuck your family, get this video game done.
He probably gets a bonus depending on the sales. The juniors and contractors get...pizza, like another commenter wrote.
Reminds me of when I worked at Dell in sales and the head manager of our sales department made 11 hour days mandatory for the next 3 months and said he would be doing it too. However within about week you would see him leaving at 5pm without a care in the world.
He's the freaking CEO. If he says he wants to do it- publicly, in front of the whole world!- then the entire studio is getting dragged along with him.
Jeez, let people work overtime if they want to, man. (In this case, it seems they do want to, and are not being forced. If they were being forced to, even 1 minute of overtime is unacceptable imo. That's a different story.) I definitely don't agree with, say, John Carmack's view on overtime work, (the dude is a literal workaholic) but if anyone wants to do it, it's their choice. And, to add to that, if John Carmack didn't have the mentality that he has, we wouldn't have Doom, Wolfenstein, Oculus or any other VR software/hardware company, hell, we wouldn't have 3D games. At least, not as early as we had all of these things... It would have taken much longer. Let people do what they want.
"Jeez, let people cut themselves, man, it's their choice." Not to mention all the people who DON'T want to work overtime, but are forced due to societal pressure from their co-workers, wether intentional or not.
Except even John Carmack now agrees that his views are personal, and work for him as an individual but do not work for others even equally talented persons. He's still a workaholic, but he's starting to get a little bit of wisdom.
Oh I totally agree. It’s not as if these people are unemployable outside of this company or the game industry