Cloud Imperium steals Star Citizen developers' weekends with mandated overtime(rockpapershotgun.com)
rockpapershotgun.com
Cloud Imperium steals Star Citizen developers' weekends with mandated overtime
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/cloud-imperium-quietly-steal-star-citizen-developers-weekends-from-under-them-with-mandated-overtime-in-the-lead-up-to-citizencon
4 comments
Ah, been a while since Star Citizen came up around here, should be productive...
Are companies like Larian Studios or other competent game companies hiding how much their devs work overtime? I feel as though articles like this are meant to be hit pieces, but from all of my coworkers who work in the game industry overtime work is expected.
Personally, I think that with devs, we have a lot of work mobility, so generally people can leave to find other jobs with similar or better pay if they wanted to. So really see this as a "soft choice" at the least. If you work in games, you expect overtime. Many devs now have on-call schedules that wake them up at 2am for support calls. It's apart of the life that we sign up for and agree to when we sign on to orgs. Why is overtime here seen as terrible? I mean its not fun, but its agreed to and generally devs are compenstated at least fairly if not well.
To be clear I'm not "rooting" or trying to "defend" the corporate overlords here, it sucks that the devs need to work overtime, and its likely due to poor management choices made months ago. But I don't think anyone working on star citizen should see this as a surprise.
If the devs are compenstated unfairly for their time, or don't get to be apart of a games success, thats a different story and should be discussed, but overtime two weeks up to launch doesn't seem to me to be a big deal.
Am I tone deaf?
Personally, I think that with devs, we have a lot of work mobility, so generally people can leave to find other jobs with similar or better pay if they wanted to. So really see this as a "soft choice" at the least. If you work in games, you expect overtime. Many devs now have on-call schedules that wake them up at 2am for support calls. It's apart of the life that we sign up for and agree to when we sign on to orgs. Why is overtime here seen as terrible? I mean its not fun, but its agreed to and generally devs are compenstated at least fairly if not well.
To be clear I'm not "rooting" or trying to "defend" the corporate overlords here, it sucks that the devs need to work overtime, and its likely due to poor management choices made months ago. But I don't think anyone working on star citizen should see this as a surprise.
If the devs are compenstated unfairly for their time, or don't get to be apart of a games success, thats a different story and should be discussed, but overtime two weeks up to launch doesn't seem to me to be a big deal.
Am I tone deaf?
Expected is one thing, that's a toxic work culture. But mandated is another, that's (probably) illegal in most countries, and absolutely an abuse of power by the employer.
Oh. Yeah I missed that bit where it's called mandated. Yeah I mean if it's against local labor laws then you're totally right.
That's not a bet I would take.