One of the most famous, if not the most famous, story regarding the game industry and its failure to properly compensate extra hours worked, does not come from an industry employee. Rather, it comes from the wife of the employee (who worked for EA at the time) who saw her husband putting in long hours, and was not being rewarded for it. She witnessed him getting burnt out during crunch time, and it started to effect their lives together. To a point where a whistle had to be blown. It was a story my girlfriend and I read a few times over before I finally made my decision to enter this growing industry and for the most part, I thought the complaint and lawsuit was done and over with. This was many years ago and times have changed. Right? The game industry, and EA specifically, learned their lesson and started to comply with basic laws for associates. If I put in a certain amount of hours, I expect to get paid for those hours of hard work. But is the problem still out there? Did the lawsuit and eventual multi-million dollar payout to the programmers and artists involved not solve anything?
It’s hard to say really as it depends on who you ask. But to shed some light on this issue, Developmag.com has released a recent survey of game developers regarding overtime pay and well… it’s not a positive sign. Opinion’s are pretty split from developers around the world. It looks like our beloved game indsutry still has some growing up to do. While I am sure overtime and “crunch times” aren’t as bad as they used to be because of these past lawsuits and internal complaints, there is definitely room for improvement.
Head on over to Developmag.com to read what other developers around the world are saying in this Quality of Life survey.
The Gamer Report 