They needed to get those horse balls and overly long reload animations right, but the shooting still looks terrible and the quest design looks like boring ass slice of life trash, the stuff that Shenmue gets shit on for.

Like most of life I dont support a lot of things, but what are you going to do? You cant fix everything. There are people who have it much worse. The employees should really be the ones to collectively threaten to quit in mass to force the issue. No way Im not buying this. Most looked forward to game in years! #Horse balls

A new article appeared Rockstar allows employees to speak out on 100-hour week controversy

While it's nice to hear those positive messages, it still very much feels like a top-down orchestrated event to smoothen out the release of this upcoming game. Especially when you have employees mention that boycotting the game causes more harm than good. There's a reason bad news surrounding the work environment only tends to come to the forefront after people get laid off.

Just as Jeff said, what Houser said in the original interview just came across as tonedeaf.

The polishing, rewrites, and reedits Rockstar does are immense. “We were working 100-hour weeks” several times in 2018, Dan says. The finished game includes 300,000 animations, 500,000 lines of dialogue, and many more lines of code. Even for each RDR2 trailer and TV commercial, “we probably made 70 versions, but the editors may make several hundred. Sam and I will both make both make lots of suggestions, as will other members of the team.”

In the wake of Telltale devs sharing their crunch nightmares he trotted the number out to signal how amazing & grand their next upcoming game will be. It's huge, it has a bunch of animations, it has a ton of text, everyone worked their ass off! A GAZILLION amount of hours! That's just not a smart thing to bring up when your company has been criticized for their work conditions since 2009.

@onemanarmyy: Yeah, it's impossible for me to take those dev comments with any degree of faith when management clearly holds all the cards. The people actually working 100 hour weeks ain't going to go talk about it on social media even if they're technically "allowed" to for the same reason that they're working 100 hour weeks to begin with, even though they aren't "required" to. Next time an annual review happens, you know anyone who talks about how shitty things are gets laid off or loses out on a bonus or what have you for not being a "team player" or whatever other garbage excuse gets ginned up for cover.

EDIT: See below.

@banefirelord: That is purely and entirely an assumption on your part. Your basically hard implying that this is some rooted thing inside of the culture of a studio that employs hundreds of people. Are you incapable of realizing that it's very easy for groups of people to be managed inefficiently and have poor treatment but it go under the radar, from a larger perspective? Tons of workers have come forward saying they had great experiences and that for the most part, lots of people have different managers. That doesn't excuse the areas where this is happening, but it sounds like as a work culture, Rockstar is thinking about this stuff too.

The fact that we are at the point that you can't even take testimonials both good and bad from workers wanting to be upfront with us about their job environment at face value is baffling. I'm not trying to belittle a movement, but how many tinfoil hats do we need to hand out? Yes, big corporations aren't great, yes there are a lot of problems surrounding crunch in game development. But I think not taking the stories, again, good and bad, coming out of the Rockstar employees at face value is pretty insulting. Of their character, of the levels you think publishers and managers go to try to manipulate public opinion/consensus.

Like I said, it's very likely that problems have happened with crunch with every studio, not just Rockstar, but if the story coming out of this is more witch hunts about them and not a focus on trying to promote their approach to all this. Yes, for sure we need to get the conversation started on worker unions and other things that help push it so these things rarely happen unchecked. But it's still nice to see a studio notoriously quiet with the press allow it's employee's a sort of open door policy in regards to how their lives are at work. All the workers have been defending themselves on Twitter too btw, responding to people doing the same thing you were, criticizing them of spewing company PR etc. At the end of the day I'd like it if more studios allowed the workers the freedom to speak on their conditions without it turning into a throwing shade match. What is so wrong with games journalists having open conversations with developers about the conditions of their work environments? It's not always going to turn into some heated you treat us the worst or we get treated the best situation. I'm sure there are lots of things just having open conversation with people and critical thinking about will help, especially with things related to crunch.

@devise22: You know what? You're right. I got high-key tinfoily there...been a long day. I do really find the concept of "we shall now allow our employees to publicly speak out" full of perverse incentives, and considering Rockstar's track record and the general state of the gaming industry and labor relations in general I can't help but be suspicious. However, you are absolutely right that with a company of this size and scope, there is no basis to assume that good experiences are automatically smoke and mirrors just because shitty experiences can and do happen at that company, and it's definitely good that this crunch conversation is happening in a more open capacity than it has been before. I still remain skeptical of the optics around this, but I also jumped to hyperbolic conclusions.

Pretty indifferent. Even if I was big on Rockstar's games, I can't say that I care that much about how a company/studio operates in order to get a game out out side of extreme circumstances; like if Rockstar was into human trafficking or arms dealing. The latter would certainly change my mind but, alleged overtime, especially if people were willing to do it? Pfffffft.

I definitely feel for them, I've soured some on my hype for this game. Think I'll wait till there's a sale.

People need to draw their own lines with this sort of stuff. I don't begrudge anyone saying this won't affect how they will play the game. When it comes to situations where separating the art from the artist becomes a notable part of the discourse it's worth it to take a step back and look at the whole picture. Should how games are made be separated from how they are consumed? That answer is different for different people but I think that's okay. I am someone who always wants to talk about video game culture and all the politics and social issues surrounding them but I think it's unrealistic and unfair to hold everyone to that standard.

With that said, I would like to see the people here that do want to just play the game in a vacuum to play and enjoy the game on its own merits but also engage with and talk about the realities surrounding its creation outside of what you've experienced with the game itself. Because it does matter and it is important to video games in general. Also, to get up on my high horse a bit, I genuinely think it makes us a better audience and better participants in the culture if we hold studious accountable for things like crunch and pay and stuff like that. I say this without a hint of bullshit gatekeeping but would like to see a mix of both worlds on this. You can enjoy the game as it exists and still consider what it took to get there and have these discussions of what is and isn't good business practices. At the end of the day, the thing we are consuming took more time, effort and resources to build than it did to play and it's okay to enjoy it as it is but also consider how it exists from the viewpoint of the people that made it.

It's hard for me to say how this colors my outlook of the game. I can't say I was that excited about it, to begin with, but I can say that with how all this stuff went down it's definitely not a good look on Rockstar. I think It's valid to make a wrong place wrong time argument here as of just a few years ago I could easily see this topic going under the radar. With culture reporting becoming more acceptable and gaining larger audiences it's great to see things like crunch and overworked/underpaid workers getting a spotlight within games critique. With that said the only shitty take on this as I see it is the one that says there is no way this game couldn't have been made without this kind of exploitation. That the creators' passion for making games justifies a company exploiting the shit out of them to get it done. No... just no.

Its good to see Rockstar being held accountable for this but at the same time disheartening to be a willing participant in an industry so willing to throw its creators on the sacrificial alter of 100 hour work weeks in the name of a multi-million dollar company content to boast about it as if it's a laudable practice. Exploiting creators under the guise of impassioned artistic sacrifice in able to not upset your publisher/shareholders and make release dates. It's gross and we can do better. This should be called out and you should be able enjoy the game despite of all this stuff but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be on your mind at the same time.

I'm playing on getting it, no none of this effected my decision at all. I only buy a 1 or 2 new games a year and I was debating between red dead 2, fallout 76 and hitman 2. In the end I've decided on red dead. I'm still unsure what fallout is going to be and I like watching other people play hitman more than playing it myself.

Good on those of you who say you're not buying it in protest. Those of you who say it will not make a difference are right in some way cause rockstar will come out and announce a ridiculously high sales number after a week, but if it does bother you than you shouldn't get it. Even a few people not getting will maybe make someone somewhere think about it. Has someone who voted for gary Johnson I knew he wouldn't win but that didn't mean I wasn't going to vote.

My biggest question is why are people taking these jobs? Lots of people here make it seem like these employees don't realize they will lose their job when game ships, or that there would be crunch has they approach ship date. One of the reasons this hasn't effected my decision is cause I assume these people knew what they were getting into. Even if it sucks now they can say they worked on red dead to get next job. You can use the knowledge you learned to start your own project. I too, when younger, worked a foolish number of hours in short time to get job done. I also have gone home against my bosses wishes when he was demanding I work more, but I had contract and knew my rights. They couldn't punish me cause I didn't break preapproved agreement.

I don't begrudge you being indifferent but to present this as they had a choice in the matter is a bit disingenuous. That's why this is a big deal in the first place. Crunch is such an ingrained part of game development that it is an expected reality instead of an option you give to your employees so they can get some extra pocket cash if they choose to do extra work. More often than not the options available to devs is either crunch, release an unfinished game or risk your game you spent years working on getting canceled shortly before it comes out. All of these are a means to please publishers that set release times and schedules for what you're working on. They control everything about how the game comes out whereas devs need to actually do the work to get it made and do it in a way that pleases publishers. Also, keep in mind that these jobs are salary positions and more times than not overtime is unpaid. At the current time crunch is seen as the status quo of game development and not something you can opt in/out of that's why there's all this talk of unionization within game dev so we can get some collective bargaining up in this piece to give workers more of a voice within the industry.

This is really funny though. One consistency with these conversations is that each person who has tried to explain it to you works in software development and yet you still try to refute it. :o

Because they want to work in games and want to make money doing it. If you have a family to worry about and your skill set involves working in games their arent that many options available. Upending your career to start your own project and expecting to get paid a living wage for it out the gate seems farfetched to me. On top of that, it's constantly a competitive space because these big companies bread and butter are hiring blue-eyed and bushy tailed kids straight out of college expecting the job of there dreams working on games. Game development is notorious for seeing high turn over rates. That's why you see so many veterans in the industry working at so many different studios or going into publishing or sticking it out and ending up in leadership positions continuing the same cycle that was normalized to them over the course of their employment.

These have been ongoing discussions within game dev for a long time but only recently has it become a mainstream conversation among those in game critique/press. Maybe that will inform more people going into it or better yet make changes to give workers better conditions in the first place.

@fatalbanana: That's kind of my point, doesn't the person going into games development realize what they're getting into? I assume there are lots of people willing to take these jobs and work any number of hours. Some want the experience, some want the line on their resume, some just want money. In a perfect world rockstar should have hired more people to spread out workload or pushed release date instead of crunch. I don't get argument about family because its not like rockstar promised to take care of these people and family forever. Family planning is important, but this different situation from telltale suddenly closing up shop one day. Lots of people here seem to be saying this kind of things happens all over and game industry jobs are very short term, or at least project to project. So I question if people knew what they were getting into or not? Suddenly after working on red dead for years the last few weeks before ship hours increased, and likely a large number will be let go after release. How many of the employees were shocked by this?

@bofooq: Mmm, you're right in that crunch isn't really a secret. I dunno about being let go (wouldn't doubt it), but I've heard that if turnaround's gonna happen, that's obviously the time. But what to make of that? So people knew what they were getting into, so what? That just means they knew their industry has problems.

Maybe the question is why complain about it? The answer is, well, because it's a problem.

Besides the fact that I just simply want to play RDR2, I don't think it's right to pass purchase on a game people worked so hard for (unless you aren't interested). It's a little like meat: that animal died to sit on your plate, and unless your diet has been meatless for some time, it's disrespectful to that creature to say "no". I think change for situations like this in the video game industry can happen another way, but passing a game that you want to play for morals won't change anything, and I believe is a disrespect to the people who worked hard to make this game happen.

@banefirelord: All good duder. Apologies if I came off as overly defensive. I earnestly think these type of conversations are probably important for us all anyways. At some point smart and ethical game developers are going to start being far more public about a lot of the better practices they preach, and as consumer we will probably know more. It's inevitable with the wave chain of things like the support for unions and what have you.

That said I do think there has been some examples of people trying to paint Rockstar in a certain light simply because they don't agree with some of the tonal decisions the studio has made, from a creative standpoint. It also has a history of labor problems. I think a lot of people wishing to use this as a platform to simply put pressure on Rockstar when the reality is the pressure needs to be larger from the consumers just on more public awareness of these type of practices.

Listen, I'm sure enough of us have hurting wallets that we will all be perfectly okay with games taking a bit longer. Especially with the amount of games feeling samey of late, or trying to nail the popular mold whatever that happens to be. Less OT to have more time to figure out what they are making probably is a good thing. But all things kind of pointed to Rockstar being the type of studio that generally likes to gives it's developers time, as their games are longer form and they aren't the usual when it comes to promotion.

@rebel_scum: Well, when you're deep in it and see the excuses made for crunch daily it's easy to start believing them, instead of realizing things could be done differently if people actually wanted them to be. The idea that it's impossible to avoid crunch in these fields is ridiculous since there's plenty of evidence showing there are alternate ways of doing things. The "I work in the industry, and we've always had to crunch" argument doesn't prove that it needs to be that way, it just proves that no one is trying to change it.

This whole disagreement started over a statement trying to put responsibility on the end user, saying crunch is necessary because of consumer expectations. All I've been trying to argue is that it's up to the developers to decide how they approach their projects, and there are many different ways of doing it. The fact that crunch happens is because developers choose to do it. Why ? Could be a dozen different reasons. But at the end of the day, if they wanted to they could absolutely avoid it.

It's worth noting that we're talking about businesses though. The reasonable ideal is maybe releasing "when it's ready" rather than committing to a deadline, but couldn't financial pressures (like the need to not run out of money) make doing so a luxury that a dev may not be able to afford? In that kind of case isn't choosing not to crunch also tacitly giving up on the project? I'm not saying it's a good thing to ever have to do (crunch, that is), only that finding a practical way to avoid it while also accounting for the realities of development seems to be asking more than saying 'just choose not to crunch' can answer.

Crunch crunch crunch.

Sorry.

@theht: Absolutely, I'd be highly surprised if much of the cause of crunch isn't studios down-playing project projections to investors to ensure funding. But again, we're talking about Rockstar here. They could probably slap a fish on the table and say "we're making a fishing game" and still get funded.

For me, playing this game will most likely be like listening to gangster rap, with pangs of guilt nagging me every 5 minutes. I'll probably be doing both next Friday.

That's true, that's true. I don't imagine Rockstar in particular couldn't be able to comfortably put out RDR2 without crunch, while being able to handle whatever that would cost. That's just based on how successful they seem of course.

If Rockstar could've finished the game without crunch and without jeopardizing their existence and the project, they should have. That's the claim I guess, right? Granting that they could have eaten the cost. They're a business though (again), so they wouldn't be inclined towards that, but that's where raising hell comes into play. You make it within their interest to be inclined towards that.

But then are we saying that there's a context where crunch would be tolerable? In cases where, in spite of reasonable precautions, it is a matter of "oh shit we gotta finish or it's all kaputski"? Where there also isn't the means to absorb the cost of not crunching. That in those cases it's not ideal, it's not good, but it's better than the alternative (i.e what would happen if you didn't crunch at that point)?

I guess the question there is twofold:

1. To what extent (considering all varieties of means) could we say crunch is an inescapable reality of the industry; is it really always avoidable, and thus always a matter of choice on the part of a developer, no matter their circumstance?
2. If we reject crunch in all contexts, what should happen if a developer is at a point where its crunch or bust?

@theht: I would flip the question and ask, when is crunch not tolerable ? I enjoy Deadliest Catch a lot. Unless you're already familiar with it it's a show following Alaskan crab fishing, which is one of the most dangerous excruciating jobs in the US. These men work 16+ hour shifts with 4 hours of sleep in between for a month straight and come home with half a year to a years salary. There's nothing wrong with that, that's the American dream. You work hard you reap the benefits, that's what the country was built on. Why is it ok ? Because it's a conscious choice. These are people that decide to make that sacrifice because they believe it's worth it. Why should anyone stop them ? Could they change the way that industry works ? Absolutely. But there's always gonna be a group of people attracted to that kind of work situation.

So when is crunch not tolerable ? When it's not a choice. You get a job, you work there for a month and then one day the boss comes in and says "we're gonna work 16 hour shifts for the next two months, and if you're not into that you're fired". Or more likely it's not as direct but it's a culture thing. You get a normal office job and it quickly becomes obvious that if you're not putting in 12 hour days you're probably stuck on the ground floor and is probably one of the first people on the chopping block once downsizing comes rolling around.

So bringing it back to videogames, if Rockstar has been doing it this way for 20 years and they're not constantly churning employees why should we condemn them for that ? Sure, there's gonna be a group of people that aspire to work there and realize that it wasn't for them, but there's obviously a sizable portion of workers there that find those work conditions acceptable. But then on the other hand you have struggling studios (like Telltale) where developers are being pushed to the limit to try to keep the business afloat, and that's probably not ok. Although you could arguably say it depends heavily on the outcome. As with many things, it often comes down to context.

@ares42: So far I think I'm following. Then in a case where a project is in trouble (whether by inadequate planning or severe unforeseen setbacks) but can in fact be finished (both with regards to funds and problem-solving), crunching would be tolerable if it's standard for the company to do so. Even if they have the means to absorb whatever cost it would take to not crunch. So even when crunching is not necessary to the survival of the project or the studio, it would be tolerable if that's the way things have always been at that studio. The choice then is up to the prospective employee, knowing though that crunch is--considering the Alaskan crab fishing example--a part of how the industry works, and that there's always going to be someone else willing to take any job they reject.

I'm assuming that an employee who doesn't know that about the industry, gets hired in a company that typically engages in crunch, and then after a month is told "16 hour shifts for the next two months or you're out," wouldn't count as being a case where it's not a choice, but instead we would say was simply uninformed. Otherwise we would have to say that the company that typically engages in crunch is intolerable on account of the employee not having chosen to work in that kind of environment, though had they investigated the company they would have found out that that's exactly the kind of environment it's known to be. So we should simply say instead that the employee was uninformed. Couldn't we then also say that the person who is hired by a dev that doesn't typically engage in crunch, but nonetheless receives the same directive after a month, was also uninformed about the industry? Like someone who took what was sold as an easy gig with some Alaskan crab fishers, but a week into the month-long job was told "16+ hour shifts with 4 hours of sleep for the rest of the month or you're out," would also have been uninformed about that industry.

In that case, crunch would never not be a choice for anyone entering the games industry. Considering the reality of crunch existing within the industry as a whole, they should always expect it and tolerate it, regardless of any developer advertising itself as "never crunch."

Telltale if I recall correctly was basically in a constant state of crunch. What makes that case, and others of struggling studios pushing employees to the limit to stay afloat, not okay?

I'd say there's a difference about being informed about the job/company and being informed about the industry. Just because there's a tendency for crunch in the videogame industry as a whole it doesn't mean every job is susceptible to it. There are studios where this kinda culture thrives and there are studios where it's not very prevalent. Just like any other industry, there are companies that treat their workers like shit and there are companies that treat their workers well.

There's also the matter of what you're being "sold" as the job. Most work negotiations include some sort of discussion about job expectations. If a developer were to advertise themselves as "never crunch" and then every project ends up with crunch anyways, ofc that's not ok.

The idea that crunch in itself is inherently wrong in some way is very idealistic. Just look at this website. Every E3 they absolutely crunch for a week and no one is standing up and saying this is wrong. There are many many jobs where crunch is part of the norm. As with many work issues, again the problem is context. As a news reporter you're expected to travel a lot, that's not inherently a problem, but if you weren't informed about it when you got the job or were suddenly demanded to travel into a warzone without prior consent that's a problem. Same thing goes for stuff like policing or medicine or offshore drilling. They all have issues that are tolerable because you are informed and consenting to them.

As for Telltale I'm not informed enough to specifically say either way, but I'm guessing it was a situation of starting out fairly "normal" and as the management got more and more desperate the line got pushed further and further.

1. Was this overtime paid?

2. Were people forced to work overtime?

3. How many of the people complaining about this own electronics like the iPhone made in Foxconn factories notorious for workers committing suicide?

Seems like a lot of people are getting upset over speculative information and not caring about the Asians being exploited every day as long as they keep supplying your latest gadgets. I know this is 'whataboutism' but it's still a relevant point. When a Telltale or Rockstar happens it seems to cause a furore but you're consuming content/products made in worse conditions every day.

I'm willing to bet most of the gaming journalists I see taking issue with what Rockstar said are still gonna buy the game and use it for site content & CPM. If you are gonna kick up a fuss at least stick to your convictions or be quiet if you still plan to profit from it, it feels very disingenuous.

If the answers to those first 2 questions are YES and NO, I see absolutely no problem with a 100 hour work week. They got a nice bonus for their hard work. Good for them! Get that dollar, a lot of companies pay a nice bonus when working outside of your regular shift. I get 25% extra during the day and 50% more at night.

I would also show restraint when bringing up what former employees of Rockstar said, you don't know if they were terminated or simply a bad fit at the company. It's kind of like reading Glassdoor reviews for your new job, how many of those bad reviews are from people who were just... bad? I'm not defending Rockstar because I don't know what is true and what isn't, it's just something you have to consider unless there's an overwhelming amount of negativity.

I don't understand people who want "crunch free development", if people chose to work those hours and got compensated then why are you trying to take away money from them? What business of yours is it? Ideally, Rockstar management told people there's gonna be a crunch period and if you agree to power through it you'll be paid a nice bonus through overtime. Again points 1 & 2 are very important in this conversation.

I remember hearing bad things about Rockstar as a company since the early to mid 2000's and it seems nothing has changed. Sadly this is not new news as often especially in the tech industry has this kind of thing is the normalized and justified that if you don't work yourself to death you're not doing enough for the company. In Japan it even worse often manga artists and from what I heard even game devs as well are worked so hard it severely harms them they can not work to the point of sickness.

I love that the conversation is now trying to pivot to "Who's to say Crunch is bad" when when studies have shown crunch is very very bad. This article focuses mainly on the general premise of overworking in labor at large, and isn't really focused on the crunch time of the videogame industry, but since Deadliest Catch was mentioned earlier as an example of "Crunch is fine" I think this is fine. It cites multiple studies showing that not only is there a human cost to being overworked, companies suffer also. Crunch is an ouroboros, the more it happens the more likely you are to screw up and thus need to spend even more hours to fix it.

And I think we really need to stop putting this into a frame of "well they're not forced to do it" as if peer pressure, shame, and guilt aren't subtle ways managers and employers get people to come in early and stay late.

@burncoat: There's a difference between wrong and bad. It's very very bad to run into buildings in full blaze, but it's not wrong to work as a firefighter. It's bad to sit at a desk for 8 hours per day, but it's not wrong to work an office job. It's bad to eat 40 hot dogs, but it's not wrong to have a job as an eating champion.

I don't believe anyone has tried to argue that crunch isn't bad, but sometimes doing bad stuff can be worth it.

@ares42: lMao an "eating champion"

We need more details. Twitter hot takes from former employees is not enough. How many people work 100 hours per week? How long do they keep it up for? How much are they paid? Why do so many employees stay if its so bad?

This won't affect my play through of the game at all. Employees and employers need to work stuff out. Consumers can't spend all their time trying to correct every perceived wrong.

I will not buy RDR2 because of long working hours in ahahahaha, just kidding, I won't buy RDR2 because it looks like something I won't have fun with.

I'd like to know the working culture though, when I was a young single lad I worked long, unproductive hours because I wanted to, sometimes without pay even though my bosses berated me for working for free. Our office environment is one where they don't promote overworking as most of them are older and have family. Once I got a dog I stopped working long hours. It's that. I imagine that Rockstar probably don't require long hours but written corporate policy doesn't dictate how internal company culture operates. There's a high chance that managers stay late to work on something, promoting other employees to work longer hours and peer pressure each other to work longer hours, all without company consent.

@dan_citi: YT brings all kinds of pleasures to our lives =)

It won't because I don't plan on buying it. I didn't care for Redemption and nothing about what I've seen/heard about this one appeals to me. That being said having to work 100 hour weeks seems deplorable and isn't something that should be bragged about

there is something inherently wrong with being an eating champ

It really sucks, but what can you do? This is unregulated capitalism, this is what the people want apparently. Unfortunately the vast majority of things I enjoy consuming come from workers suffering in shitty working conditions. I wish I was a better person, but abandoning nearly everything that I enjoy in life in hopes to be an extremely tiny part of some kind of movement doesn't seem like the right way to approach this. I think the best thing we can do is try to put people in power who will address issues like this on a broader scale.

It's true that there are exceptions, but that doesn't mean the norm in the industry ceases to be the norm. Like layoffs for instance. If a company builds an image for itself that they don't engage in layoffs, but in a circumstance find it necessary, would doing it then be intolerable when its still a given for the industry it's a part of? Of course not. Layoffs are still the norm overall.

In the case of E3 coverage, Alaskan crab fishing, war journalism, policing, medicine, or offshore drilling, if someone engages in those things without knowing their nature, the problem there is that the individual didn't do their research, and they're of course still free to back away so someone more willing could take their position. If someone is sold on no layoffs, or no crunch, and then those very things happen to happen, it's still tolerable because the nature of the industry exists independent of whether or not the employee did their research.

But we know that crunch itself isn't as inherent to the nature of the video game industry as risk is inherent to being a war correspondent. Both of us have already imagined clear cases where it could be avoided (at the expense of money and time). The issue with crunch there is that it is the norm, and so in spite of its being demonstrably harmful to the people doing that kind of work, and even in spite of a company being able to absorb the cost of avoiding it, it's still done and tolerated because it's the norm. That's to say: the harm in those cases could be avoided, but isn't.

Should we tolerate harm to people just because it's a norm that's consented to, even when that harm is avoidable at the expense of money and time?

Just making sure people this deep in the thread know I've made two separate updates of articles continuing to be published involving this story.

True, but when I said they aren't forced to do it, I was including that there's no sense of pressure/shame/guilt being bestowed upon them.

If that is the case, and they are being paid, then I think the crunch is fine. If people want the dollar let them get it.

No. If you market yourself as being the exception, and then isn't, that's not ok.

Let's try to understand why crunch is generally considered wrong. The basic idea most people think of when you talk about crunch is that a company has set a deadline for a project, at some point before the deadline they realize they won't finish in time, so they then decide that they need to crunch to be able to reach the deadline. Now why is this wrong ? It's not because crunch is inherently wrong, it's because they suddenly change the work agreement for all their employees. You can replace crunch with something like say a sudden change of work hours and it's still the same story. It's not wrong to have a workplace that operate during the night-time shift, but it's absolutely wrong to suddenly change all your employees shift from day-time to night-time.

And as far as your last question. Yes, we do it all the time everywhere. People do risky stuff to save time and money every single day, it's just a a scale of risk vs reward. There's no such thing as a completely safe construction site, it's just less risky. Butchers could work at half the speed and reduce their risk of cutting themselves by let's say 0.2%, but would that be worth it ?

@ares42: I'm not asking about risk though, I'm asking about harm. Or am I wrong to think there's actual harm in crunching at all? Where crunching is actually just as harmless as not crunching? Because right now, while I'm not completely against it in certain contexts, I do consider it intrinsically bad because I understand it to be harmful. But I think it's generally considered bad not only because it's seen as intrinsically harmful, but also because it's considered the norm, and so can be exploited (used in excess and when unnecessary).

And it's certainly not okay for a company to say they don't do layoffs and then have to do layoffs to save the company nonetheless, but that doesn't mean it should be intolerable. If not because we understand the nature of the industry, then because we can understand and agree that it was necessary for the company to do. The same way we could understand and agree that in a certain context, crunch may be necessary as well, even if it's non-standard for a company. Why should we call any of that wrong? It's certainly not ideal, but again, not intolerable either.

@theht: If a company has 20 injuries per year, but could have 10 if they spent more money, are they not doing harm by not spending more money ?

That's risk.

If you're doing something you love and work 100 hours a week on it, cool. Problem is when that mentality guilt trips others into neglecting themselves, their health and their family because they feel they have to.

For nearly 30 years I'd work many, many extra hours unpaid, and I'd do it because I loved my job.

Now, with a wife and three kids I'm very strict on myself and will leave when I've done my hours.

As I leave I hear the sniping from younger staff members about how much harder they are working, but I just have to block it out.

If you give, give, give the company will take, take, take. You may see yourself getting promoted quicker, but when layoffs come you are the first out of the door because you have a higher salary.

It's been a hard lesson, but in the end you have to look after yourself and your family. If the company needs staff to regularly work extra hours they just don't have enough staff. That's down to them, not you.

@cyberbloke said:

Really resonates with my own experience - I work in IT - mainly focused on ERP integration projects - for an international company. Since we went to the stock market 5 years ago - which brought in a lot of cash - we are constantly squiring other (smaller and competitive) companies, which then need to be integrated in our IT infrastructure. Basically I am every 6 months somewhere else on this planet and chasing a set deadline - the closer you get to set target days the more hours you usually end up working simply because usually we start with too little resources in such projects to begin with.

I love my job and working in IT/coding at times comes with excessive hours. Not so much because it's explicitly expected but because if you are in the process of working on a complex code you can't just stand up and leave at a set time - getting into the right mindset to handle these challenges takes time and once you are in the zone you don't leave before you got at least to a given milestone.

The biggest lesson I learned the past 5 years however is to actively cut myself off work in between projects for as much as possible - for my own long term sake and the sake of my family and friends.

Like every game I play, I will enjoy what I enjoy while still being critical of its "faults" or problematic elements. I will also do what I can in the future to support gaming's unionization.

@ares42: Sure, but there you're talking about accidents. If crunch is always a choice, how could it ever be likened to an accident?

I wonder how many of those planning to boycott the game factor poor working conditions into all their consumer choices. At least these people were paid a decent wage and had the freedom to leave the job if they felt they were being exploited. The same could not be said for the people who most likely made the shoes on your feet, the shirt on your back and whatever you just ate for lunch. If you're going to get on your high horse at least be consistent with your argument.

@theht: In the context of your questioning about the morality of causing harm to employees they are the same thing. It's irrelevant if the cause is incidental or conscious, they both still cause harm.

The question "Can a choice be likened to an accident" is a completely different topic and a completely different discussion.