Epic devs speak out on Fortnite crunch

April 29th, 2019, 18:16 Posted By: wraggster

Epic Games is the latest company taking criticism for its crunch culture, as Polygon today reported on working conditions at the studio since the 2017 launch of Fortnite Battle Royale.
Polygon spoke with multiple current and former Epic employees and contractors who put together an unflattering picture of their work experience, with many reporting working 70 hours a week regularly, with some reaching up to 100 hours a week.
"I was working at least 12-hour days, seven days a week, for at least four or five months," one person told the site. "A lot of that was having to stay at work till 3 or 4 in the morning."
One source said they knew multiple people who refused to work weekends, and were then fired when a deadline was missed. For contractors, there was an understanding that refusing to work excessive hours would mean their contracts would not be renewed at the end of their term. One person said managers either ignored complaints about the working hours or threatened to fire those who spoke up.
"It's killing people," one source told Polygon. "Something has to change. I can't see how we can go on like this for another year. At first, it was fine, because Fortnite was a big success and that felt good. We were solving problems that were new for Epic: how to run a big, global game as an online service. But now the workload is just endless."
Fortnite's success was by all accounts a surprise. One customer service worker told the site that the number of player questions and problem reports went from 20-40 a day to about 3,000 a day. An Epic representative noted that the company has roughly doubled its headcount since the launch of Fortnite, and has also hired external studios to assist in the workload and instituted multiple teams working in parallel to stagger workload between them.
The people Polygon spoke to said there were problems with the on-boarding and training of so many people in such a short space of time, as well as management's handling of a live service game.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...ortnite-crunch

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