“Crunch time” has been a major issue in game development for years now and has only gotten worse with time. Game development teams tend to want to create a new hit game—one of the games that explode in popularity and give the dev team the notoriety they desire. This, however, has resulted in long work hours and a grueling schedule that leaves individual game developers in a bad position.
Now, I’m a huge fan of video games in general, and I’m willing to bet that a good number of people share the same opinion. Almost everyone has at least one video game that they were fond of at some point in their life. With how deeply ingrained gaming is in American culture, it would be difficult not to. So, naturally, being a fan of games and gaming in general, it’s disappointing to hear the way that some companies will mistreat their employees.
Crunch time has become a phrase that will instinctively make a game developer cringe, and it’s easy to see why. “Crunch time” essentially means that near new game releases or patches, developers will have to work overtime to get the work done and be miserable for weeks on end. There’s always been a necessity for a bit of crunch time; everyone wanting to work hard to produce a perfect product before the release date is just a natural human instinct. It becomes an issue when employees have to work 80-100 hour weeks for months on end and produce a poorer product as a result (not to mention the fact that the employees themselves are suffering).
To put it in the easiest way possible, imagine having to pull an all-nighter for two months straight because your professor lied and ended up making all the coursework due months earlier than you thought it would be. Ouch, right? It’s definitely not the best for anyone’s mental or physical health, and game developers are struggling because of it.
A few games that have made a splash lately in regards to crunch time issues are “The Last of Us 2,” “Red Dead Redemption 2,” and “Cyberpunk 2077.” Companies have a nasty habit of announcing release dates early, promising to customers that the product will be out by a particular month or even year, and then having to backpedal when there are unforeseen consequences.
Several years ago, a woman who went by the online alias “EA Spouse” (EA standing for Electronic Arts, a major game developer) would post open letters about the trials her significant other had undergone during their time working at the game developer. This story spiraled and resulted in multiple class-action lawsuits against EA gaming that ended up with a payout of $14.9 million dollars towards employees in an attempt to make up for stolen wages that occurred as a result of the overtime they worked. So this isn’t just an issue of games being late or at poorer quality than expected; this is an issue of wage theft and employee abuse.
As a more recent example, “Cyberpunk 2077” is especially notorious for this; not even a month ago, they had to extend the release date due to issues with the development of the game. The company issued an apology via their Twitter and was lambasted by irate customers who had been promised the release by a certain date. I have to admit: I was also incredibly disappointed when I heard this, as this wasn’t the first time the game has had this issue. It’s an unfortunate issue for customers, as they wish to buy the product, but it’s a significantly worse issue for the poor developers who have to work themselves to the bone to finish a product that’s going to need an update in the future anyway, due to the coding issues that are likely going to be present.
Coding is tiring, and tired employees make mistakes. A large portion of games nowadays requires update patches after the initial release to fix major glitches that come as a result of poor coding mistakes made by employees that, frankly, don’t get paid enough to work 70-100 hour weeks. Crunch time, from an outsider’s perspective, is irritating at best, but I personally enjoy buying products from companies that don’t abuse their employees. Having developers work back-breaking hours to produce a game that is going to need updates in the future anyway isn’t ideal for me, and I doubt it’s ideal for many of the people who play the games that are involved in this continuing controversy.
All I can hope for in the future is that more consumers become aware of the issues of crunch time and game development, as well as understand that even their favorite game development companies can mistreat their employees.