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Polygon: How Fortnite’s success led to months of intense crunch at Epic Games
- Thread starter Robaperas
- Start date
Also deeply infuriating given how it has shat up the entire conversation. Which was Epic's intent, of course. The only reason they publicized and pushed a cut that was otherwise solely chosen because EGS, as low-ambition as it is, had literally nothing to justify a higher cut to developers with.
Fuck Epic
Most developers are the same, people expect the next Last of Us game this year, but they just finished the mocap. People get so mad when it comes to crunch but still want games out as soon as possible. You can't have it both ways
I knew this shit was going on when people in the other thread were talking about how Apex couldn't keep up with Fortnite's weekly updates. Updates that frequently can only be done this way and that's not a good thing.
There seems to be something that's driving the younger devs to "want to get promoted".
Because adding more people to a problem that needs to be tackled by one person doesn't necessarily speed up the process?
The solution is to have people work regular hours and have fixes and updates come out in a timely manner instead of immediately.
Everyone likes to think that adding more people to add updates and fix singular issues automatically will get you the same efficiency as one person working 80 hr weeks when the solution is to have people work less and set expectations that something will be done in 4 business days instead of 1.
That quote, holy fucking shit.
I haven't read the 5 pages of the thread yet, did the corporate defenders wake up yet to give their hot takes?
Depending on workflow streams, just adding more people won't get you the same efficiency as one person doing the job.
Shilly thing to say? How about you think about better ways to tackle the root problem outside of a blanket answer.
Yep. This is apparent in many of the apex discussions where fortnite is consistently praised for its update speed.
Not surprised. Companies don't want to hire more people, just force the ones they have to do more work. Customers/consumers expect all this stuff to be instant, but don't care how it's done as long as it's quick and doesn't cost them anything/a lot, but then don't understand the cost of quick turnaround for a business.
Things like onboarding and training take time. You can't just hire somebody and the next day put them behind a computer making a game.
Lol, this entire thread is full of "just hire more people, you cheap asses". This is not how this works, people.
Those who demand a unreasonable amount of new content every other week must know that will come at a human expense at the other end. This is how it is.
Those who demand a unreasonable amount of new content every other week must know that will come at a human expense at the other end. This is how it is.
This. That's how it is now for BRs, in large part because of the success of FN.
Also, chalk one more up for "throwing endless people at a problem doesn't necessarily help".
Thats bullshit man. You dont play basketball for 7 days straight 100 hours a week. Its not that they cant do it, they dont have time to do anything else besides work.
It would be something else if that game was new but its been out since last year and at this position from the launch.
How come you are not able to hire people for fixing stuff, patches and so on or something smaller within one year?
More people can work on more things. But you get only some time in basketball match. And yeah, when you are not running on time constructing a building, ther le are delays, you know. Or more shifts (this is my friend's work).
So your examples arent on point.
I get what you are saying but this game is out in the wild for far too long to crunch people like that with fuvking fixing patches. We are not talking here about designing levels in god of war for fucks sake :D
ps: yes, i hire people from time to time. I know how much time it takes. But if I know that i need people and i cant manage hiring for year even if I have all the resources I need (this is epic right, not some indie studio)... well i dont get it.
Yeah this is something people don't consider.
Even if someone has the perfect skill set to just pick up and work on something they still need to become familiar with the operating procedures at a new company, as well as actually become familiar with the stuff they are working on.
i think I've read that 1 new hire could take as long as 6 months to get to the point where they are working at the same capacity that someone who has worked there for 2 years.
Epic the savior, coming to rescue us from Steam /s
Seriously, it's high time that developers get the opportunity to unionize. There is not another solution. I'm not sure what's preventing widespread unionization, but if I had to hazard a guess then I'd imagine it's like how other companies in other industries work endlessly to actively prevent it.
Seriously, it's high time that developers get the opportunity to unionize. There is not another solution. I'm not sure what's preventing widespread unionization, but if I had to hazard a guess then I'd imagine it's like how other companies in other industries work endlessly to actively prevent it.
I always thought that releasing multiple patches per day even is crazy. But i kinda thought that they are just making mistakes because they want those patches out fast so they need to fix things they screw up with previous patch. But with this story things are looking way different.
Its not that simple when you work on a team. If you leave, your essentially giving everyone else on the team your workload.
Good. Everyone else will leave too and the house of cards will collapse.
...yeah, that'll explain how they're basically the only devs managing a weekly update schedule. Wonder how working conditions are like over at Playground Games, since they're the only other dev that I'm aware of that's trying to keep up with weekly updates for Forza Horizon 4 (albeit in the form of monthly batches prepared in advance). I'd like to imagine UK law would prevent excessive crunching, but I also realise I'm probably being really naive here.
Also, I'll let Nibel do the wisecracking about EGS:
Also, I'll let Nibel do the wisecracking about EGS:
Granted I work in finance but yeah it takes about 6 months for a new hire to be a contributing worker on a process. Now I assume it would be faster if the person being hired is experienced but it's not a quick thing
No, they were always a crunch house during Gears of War. It was just not as big a thing to highlight. They've always had super small teams and crunched hard. How do I know this? I worked with a lot of ex-Epic people.
I know the term tends to get overused these days, but... yikes.
As a developer who actually owns and has actually read The Mythical Man Month: you're really misrepresenting it.
What it says, is that throwing more bodies as a late project will not, in the end, result in the project becoming less late, because interpersonal communication channels increase with the square of the number of bodies on the project, which tends to dominate over their additional contributions.
WHAT IT DOES NOT, IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM SAY, is that "hiring more people to work on ongoing development that has no forseeable end-date or deadline, won't do anything to let your workforce as a whole take more, healthier breaks, before you work them to death"
Hiring a whole other shift of developers likely won't let them push out content any faster than they already are -- unless they're working on independent content projects, because parallelism still works -- that's the MMM conclusion, that more bodies don't speed up an already late thing. What it almost certainly would let them do is sustain their current pace without burning out their workforce, because the MMM says nothing even remotely like "more bodies never reduce the workload on individual contributors at a given pace which is intended to be ongoing indefinitely".
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Can they really not hire more people? I know there'd be a transition period of having to get people up to snuff on the code and company and the systems, but after a quarter wouldn't the growing pains be gone and now they could get their constant updates without 100 hour work weeks?
Assuming they aren't scamming people, if someone is getting 40 hours of overtime (time and a half) every week wouldn't it financially be a lot cheaper to just hire another person to take those hours?
Assuming they aren't scamming people, if someone is getting 40 hours of overtime (time and a half) every week wouldn't it financially be a lot cheaper to just hire another person to take those hours?
But they are hiring more people. Hiring more people is the answer to long-term scaling. No one is disputing that.
The problem is that the game is scaling faster than they can hire. What I and other posters are saying is that "just hire more people because you have money" is not as simple as it sounds because the hiring process is a complicated problem in itself that must be solved.
I'm not disputing that, I'm disputing the notion that this makes them slaves in any sense of the word, and I challenged the guy to provide the legal provisions he claims makes them slaves, and he hasn't responded with that answer yet.
This is true ^ this occurs in any setting of work I feel. What makes me angry though is Epic has more than enough money (for a while now and especially now) that they could afford to take the time to slow updates, sit back, and reevaluate.
No need to be naive. If you stagger the content you're working on, and deliver it on good schedule, you can make it work without crunch.
You can, for example, deliver all content in the monthly May patch, then stagger the release, to give something every week until the June monthly patch is released, and so on.
Quite a lot of Fortnite players would appreciate if Epic would take a bit more time thinking through/balancing/polishing certain new features/weapons/other additions more instead of throwing as much shit at the wall as fast as possible and seeing what sticks. They keep vaulting perfectly good items that are keeping things fun & fresh while introducing new, completely broken stuff that they then need to spend 2-4+ weeks fixing. And at this point there are sooo many skins & dances & everything that they could slow down releasing new ones and keep recycling the huge number of old skins.
This is where your fast battlepasses and new content come from.
There's two parts to making a better industry. Firstly the developers and publishers need to stop treating their staff like this. Secondly we as customers need to stop demanding new shit every week and throwing hissy fits if developers only put out so much at a time.
New content takes time and manhours to make. It'll come out eventually, and there are litteraly thousands of games out there to play in the meantime. Just let it happen.
There's two parts to making a better industry. Firstly the developers and publishers need to stop treating their staff like this. Secondly we as customers need to stop demanding new shit every week and throwing hissy fits if developers only put out so much at a time.
New content takes time and manhours to make. It'll come out eventually, and there are litteraly thousands of games out there to play in the meantime. Just let it happen.
Why hire more people when you can milk your current employees to overwork themselves and take on the responsibilities of 2, 3 more people?
This would not happen in a world where developers collectively call it quits at the 8 hour mark. No one would feel bad for going home. No one would feel bad for going on vacation.
We. Need. Unions.
It does state, however, that throwing more bodies at the problem increases the communication overhead, something that is present even if you are working on parallel tracks. I agree it's not a perfect fit here because it's mostly about shipping a product with a single release (as opposed to a live service game), but the point was to reply to people just saying "Hire more people!" and inform them why that isn't as simple of a solution as they think it is.
And that is why I will never go back to the games industry. Spent 8 years there, on multiple projects. Never once was there a project where there wasn't crunch. Even on games that were polished as fuck, they still wanted crunch. Fuck that shit.
Working in gaming sounds like an absolute nightmare. Underpaid, overworked, frankly not that interesting, and a great way to suck any enjoyment someone has in a hobby right out.
ERA: Crunch is so bad. Poor devs :(
Also ERA: Why Apex (or other online game TBH like OW) so slow? No hype, dead game, look at Fortnite.
This is why crunch will never die. If game devs unionize there will be such a backlash from consumers. Mark my words.
Also ERA: Why Apex (or other online game TBH like OW) so slow? No hype, dead game, look at Fortnite.
This is why crunch will never die. If game devs unionize there will be such a backlash from consumers. Mark my words.
True as hell, the save the subreddit's response to this has largely been "don't care, want bug fixes fast like BR"
It's "modern slavery" which that poster defined as occurring. Modern Slavery as defined by Kevin Bales (per Wikipedia) and I'm paraphrasing as on mobile.
When a person is under the control of another person, who uses violence and force to maintain that control, and who's purpose for the control is exploitation.
Let's break that down into its 3 sections
1. Is a person under the control of another
Yes epic has bosses and employees
2. Is violence and or force being used to maintain that control.
Yes. Emotional Abuse is considered to be as valid a form of domestic violence as physical violence and laws globally are catching up to reflect that.
In this article (paraphrasing) an epic employee states that while they have unlimited time off, nobody takes it because to take time off would be to place your workload on another employee. That's coercion by threat of increased workload on other employees should an employee take time off.
3. Is the purpose of that control exploitation
Yes, the purpose is to make as much profit as possible from fortnite. Working developers far beyond the typical work week due to the increased productivity of experienced staff and more specifically using a juniors desire for upward mobility as a carrot to chase for this purpose is definitely exploitation.
Which, to be fair, is precisely how Playground has been distributing Forza Horizon 4 updates (monthly patches including new cars, races and championships, which gets unlocked over the following four weeks).