
Fortnite’s success led to months of intense crunch at Epic Games - pmcpinto
https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/23/18507750/fortnite-work-crunch-epic-games
======
CompelTechnic
If I were a mid-level manager at Epic, I wonder how I would handle internal
politics at this time. So many competing objectives...

1\. Focus on producing novel content to keep the game interesting, mixing
things up enough over weeks/months, but without killing the core mechanics.

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.

3\. Give bonuses to my employees, who are working their tails off, to prevent
resentment. Especially in the over-worked video game industry.

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.

5\. All this, while the company reaps huge profits.

~~~
vvanders
> Give bonuses to my employees, who are working their tails off, to prevent
> resentment. Especially in the over-worked video game industry.

Hah.

I've know a few people on break-away titles(on the level of fortnight for an
era) in my time in that industry. In most of those cases the employer or
publisher had slipped in some sort of cap in royalties on a per-employee
basis. So while their % cut of royalties was in the 7-figures they never saw
anything above 6-figures.

Kudos on you for thinking this way but I'd be surprised if most of the people
working on Fortnight are seeing more than mid FAANG compensation.

~~~
MuffinFlavored
> more than mid FAANG compensation.

Do FAANG do remote? If so... what's that compensation like?

~~~
GarMan
I remote for Amazon (as part of twitch but know other amazon remotes) but from
my experience when other FAANG recruiters cold call me remote at those
companies is discouraged. Amazon pays based on regions so my salary does not
match what the ancestor post claims but would if I lived in the Bay Area.

~~~
MuffinFlavored
levels.fyi says an SDE III (Senior SDE) should make $300k/yr in total
compensation at Amazon working in a non-inflated city like Austin, TX.

Is that in line with your compensation?

~~~
GarMan
Close enough (I’m not in the USA)

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DaddyGotDough
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.

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strikelaserclaw
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.

~~~
notTyler
1) It's not short term. Fortnite is constantly adding new features. This isn't
normal crunch before a game ships then relax after patching bugs, it's
literally crunch every week.

2) The actual employees are paid very well via a profit share arrangement. To
my understanding, the issue is when contractors are worked like this. I don't
believe contractors receive overtime or bonuses.

edit: some below have pointed out contractors do receive overtime.

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mrbill29
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

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argd678
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.

~~~
9935c101ab17a66
> I think they interviewed mostly people new to the gaming industry who don’t
> know how to manage their time under pressure,

So everyone who has to work long hours is just incompetent or new, or new and
incompetent, and should just do the same amount of work in less time, duh?
That's not how these high-pressure workplaces function. Even if you are a
significant contributor and you are technically allowed to opt out of
overtime, that doesn't mean everyone won't resent you for it, and that
management won't interpret as a 'lack of commitment' when promotion or reviews
come around. As a corollary, the recent rise 'unlimited time off' policies
have been widely criticized because they often inadvertently contribute to
implicit pressures to take less time off than before, because of the
resentment, hostility and jealously. I've seen some companies rolling out
unlimited time off with mandatory minimums which seems healthier, but I'm
unsure how successful it has been.

> they expect you to know what to do with little guidance

Even good engineers need guidance, and guidance and training are especially
important when you're doubling and tripling your workforce.

> 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.

This is a super weird analogy and makes no sense to me.

> and you will get fired if you’re not competent and pulling your weight

Where does the article say that Epic shouldn't fire incompetent employees? No
one is saying that.

> but that’s the industry they’re in, you can’t have a few people putting
> everyone else’s livelihood at risk

Your response to a toxic work culture is just 'It is what it is, deal with
it'? Don't you think we should have discussions about the human impact and
damage caused by these intractable competing interests? And there's almost
certainly a financial and business cost, it's just not as obvious to measure.

> So it’s not like some sweat shop, it’s more complex than the article makes
> it sound.

The article covers both sides pretty thoroughly, there's a litany of quotes
from Epic PR addressing the claims and recounting their efforts to resolve
them. I understand WHY these pressures exist, and it's clear the Epic want to
do everything they can to leverage their transient popularity. But that's not
to say they shouldn't be criticized or they shouldn't do better.

~~~
argd678
I don’t think you’ve worked at a struggling studio before, but yes that’s just
how it is, right up to the CEO. Once someone figures out a better way they’d
do it in a heartbeat. Executives are no different than anyone else and they
shoulder the responsibility of making sure everyone has a job too, it’s one
sided to think they’re only interested in profit especially in Epic’s case.
You may think the museum analogy is odd, but it’s not just another studio for
many people.

~~~
Latty
But this isn't a struggling studio - it's a studio making insane profit.

~~~
argd678
It’s not the same as say selling Microsoft Office, where the sales are stable.
It’s not stable and will taper off if they don’t act on it, they also only
have one game. So they got lucky and it’s fragile success, it can change at
anytime, they know this and since they’ve been around since 1991 and have come
close to shutting down many times since then. EA would be more what you’re
thinking, where they have more diverse income from many titles and studios,
one game failing won’t cause EA to shutdown, but that’s not what’s happening
here. I can understand the righteous feelings, but it needs to be coupled with
an accurate understanding of the problem to find a solution.

~~~
9935c101ab17a66
But... no one is denying that. The article acknowledges it (it actually
discusses it extensively), I acknowledge it. That doesn't mean they shouldn't
do better, or that there isn't a huge cost on the personal lives of the people
working there.

You are also making the assumption that their continued success is dependent
on their toxic work culture, but I don't think that's a given. I'd wager that
most people who work the kind of hours that we're discussing are:

a) either no more productive than someone working 40-50 hours, or only
marginally more productive b) More likely to make simple/avoidable mistakes,
which take time to track down, resolve and waste QA resources c) More likely
to quit or have to go medical leave, which increases turnover, which is an
enormous cost in development.

Furthermore, the stories of how bad the work place is will discourage
potentially skilled applicants, and the longer they let it go on, the more
trouble they'll have changing the way they are perceived in the industry.

I'd also wager that if you are constantly in crunch mode like this, it would
stifle creativity and possible innovations. No one has the time to play around
with new ideas, or try things and fail.

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mynegation
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.

~~~
ungzd
I'm not sure that level of crunch is generally lower in indie companies. In
theory, they might be struggling more, they are in disadvantageous position
against big companies, they have to do more experiments and take more risks
than AAA, which make the same "press X to hollywood" or network shooters for
the last 20 years.

(I don't play big companies' (modern) games, because almost always I'm not in
target audience and find such games completely unplayable)

~~~
WorldMaker
Yeah, if crunch is the moral issue, then indie companies are more prone to
work/life balance issues than even the AAA developers. Indie companies have
the usual startup issues of either the developers are moonlighting after their
day jobs (working two jobs, a personal crunch) or pushed hard for "passion" to
work hard (crunch) to pay the bills when it's still life or death to the
company.

A lot of indies directly come from "game jam culture" which celebrates over-
taxing developers with crunch "for fun".

Sustainable business practices in the games industry are unlikely to be
possible until the industry is much more strongly unionized. At which point it
would be more likely for the AAA games to be union shops and/or able to afford
unionized workers to work on games.

~~~
kkarakk
Indie workers get rewarded proportionally for their crunch though. AAA workers
seem to have to crunch for their base salary and good luck ever seeing an
extra penny if the game becomes a phenomenon like fortnite did. meanwhile
notch is a billionaire now and his employees are all comfortable millionaires

~~~
WorldMaker
Indie workers _may_ get rewarded for their crunch efforts. Usual startup
worker caveats apply that far more indie development companies bankrupt than
succeed, and even in a small, early startup not all stock is equivalent
(depending on funding sources and corporate politics).

------
Thaxll
Semi related, but Epic pays 25%+ above market.

~~~
kaonashi
How much is your health and sanity worth?

------
virtuexru
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.

~~~
simias
Because videogames are glamorous and a significant portion of people in CS
went into it for the specific purpose of working in videogames. As such it's
one of the rare sectors in our industry where employers do not struggle too
much to hire fresh blood.

At the risk of sounding a bit jaded I don't feel _too_ bad about overworked
videogame developers. The vast majority of them can quit at any point and
probably land a job in some other sector of the industry, probably with better
work conditions and a better salary.

Developers _chose_ to work for these videogame studios. They chose the glamour
of being able to say "I wrote some code for GTA V" rather than the comfort and
quality of life of being able to say "I write backend code for a flower shop".

~~~
MaybiusStrip
I get it, some jobs are more desirable than others, and there has to be some
reason for people to take the less glamorous job, but that barrier could just
be skill. I support hard work when it comes to training. Hey, you want to make
video games, well it's a really competitive field and you better train your
ass off in order to be the best at what you do. I think generally, leveraging
passion in order to get people to work really hard is good. They get
fulfillment out of it, and everyone else gets a great product.

But that's not what this is. This is investors and executives who found a
money pump and are pumping as hard as they possibly can without any regards
for the health and wellbeing of the human machine they're putting pressure on.
At some point, you have to give people the time to live their lives outside of
work or the world is going to become a worse place. They become stressed and
depressed, and it affects their families and friends, and and then has a
ripple effect on society.

~~~
simias
I agree with you completely, I'm not arguing that these studios are behaving
ethically. I'm just pointing out that the fact that videogame studios have bad
working conditions has been public knowledge for a long time and the engineers
who apply for these jobs have to be aware of it. Yet they still decide to get
into these jobs even though I'm certain that the vast majority of them could
land a more comfortable and probably better paid developer job elsewhere.

I realize that I'm playing the "blame the victim" game and I'm not entirely
comfortable with that but in this case it reminds me of that guy who knowingly
got in touch with a cannibal to get eaten. If you know what's going to happen
and you still on your own free will and without external pressure decide to
continue on that path can you really complain that things are exactly how you
knew they were going to be?

Are these people coerced in any way to work for these game studios? Were they
lied to? Didn't they know that AAA game development is a thankless, soul-
crushing task with very tight deadlines and terrible work ethics? Because I
remember having almost exactly this conversation with a friend at school more
than 15 years ago when he told me he wanted to become a game developer.

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sneakernets
Game devs need to unionize. Now. This madness has got to stop.

~~~
intertextuality
I love the downvotes for suggesting unionization. Very nice, HN.

~~~
ahoy
HN is full of people who fit the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire"
stereotype perfectly. Droves of developers sure that one day their SaaS site
will make them rich, that one day they'll sell their side-project to google.

Most of us won't!

~~~
dang
When people make criticisms of the HN community that apply just as much to any
large sample of humans in general, I don't think they're really talking about
HN.

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coldcode
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).

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fyoving
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.

~~~
vvanders
> faulting them for becoming successful and relevant in the first place.

Sorry but I'm going to call out bad work practices that run counter to
building a better product when I see it _regardless_ of the success.

Crunch destroys lives(remember easpouse?) and has no place in that industry.

~~~
sokoloff
When you have a tiger by the tail (either literally or figuratively), it's not
unreasonable to temporarily increase your level of effort beyond that which is
long-term sustainable.

I've done it (in games, in 2 other startups, and in finance). I still do it
now sometimes when waves of unrelated work all happen to peak near the same
time.

~~~
intertextuality
It is unreasonable to force developers to increase their level of effort.

Manage adequately, hire more people if necessary. There are other solutions
that going "welp, we're successful, better work even more hours now".

