Yet Epic still has billions in profits. They're valued ~15B. One of the largest companies in the world is a major backer. If your point was that Valve can sit back because they've made a lot of money, I'm afraid I can't follow.
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Polygon: How Fortnite’s success led to months of intense crunch at Epic Games
- Thread starter Robaperas
- Start date
Polygon did a while ago with Klei, and yeah more reporting of no-to-little crunch Dev studios would be good cause it inspires others.
This so much. I wish journalists and analysts would make articles more to the tune of "the reason why apex isn't being updated as fast as fortnite" and expose the reality if it.
If Epic sat back right now, Fortnite could lose to Apex, PUBG or whatever. If you can't see the difference between Steam and Fortnite, it's too late right now for me to explain it to you.
You think the fact that they have one game was enough to prop them up to major investors for billions of dollars? They have nothing else going for them? That valuation is only from Fortnite? No. But nice goalpost moving. Epic is making billions already.
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STW isn't dead, though its update schedule isn't quite as crazy as BR's. Recently they seem to have been focusing on making some fairly big gameplay changes (completely revamped the hero-system which includes a fuckton of new things and streamlined character development) but there have been some fairly big seasonal story events too.
Is this where we pretend epic doesn't have own and distribute one of the largest game engines in the world?
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Epic Games is worth over 15 billion dollars, its Epics fault here. Epic burned though the lives of its employees and now that they have reached unseen wealth they use that money to force their way into the storefront competition.
Epic has a "small" very profitable thing called Unreal Engine. Heck, the main idea behind Fortnite was showing Unreal Engine 4 and trying to take away the whole stigma of dude bro graphics from UE3 back when it was Fortnite Save the World.
(and now for the topic in hand)
Regardless, if anyone thought this was not happening, they were lying to themselves. The fast update pace meant that it was more likely than not a reality.
Only surprising thing is some of the upper management calling contractor "bodies". Such peak late-stage capitalism, totally removing the feelings on people and just thinking of them as one-time use people that will be burned out.
About why crunch is bad and hurtful long term for a company: it destroys people both mentally and physically and leads to a continue revolving door of people in the company (as they just get the cash and then crash out after surviving it for a little bit), being inefficient in the process. An experienced happy worker is better than 3 new (even with previous experience in the field) that is stressed out of its life.
Crunch is a "short term" solution for a flaw in management (bad planning, issues in production / downstream that were not projected) that is used too much in the long term. Crunch leads to major long term issues that make it so that management (and top people) have less experience leading to more crunch.
Fortnite is basically operating at an advantage over it's competition on the back of working it's employees to death. This shit should be illegal. If it's not possible to have updates that regularly without crunch then we should get used to a world with less updates.
Again the article talks about the first months, it's not like that now
That sounds like what Tim Sweeney or any high position employees at Epic Games will say to their 'bodies' to guilt trap them into overworking.
This just tells us that crunch is a designed feature of game development. Its purpose is to exploit workers to the max.
Do we know that Respawn doesn't engage in exploitative work practices against its workers? Not to say you're wrong, but we don't know how Respawn operates to say they're any more "off the hook" than Epic, considering studios everywhere have stories that sound just as abusive as shit like this.
It hurts productivity and the competivity of your economy in the long run.
Ha ha, yeah, it just represents my severe distaste for games like this. I don't think I can express in words how much I resent what these games have wrought outside of using hyperbolic language like that. It's just my personal opinion, though.
I feel the industry is worse off as a result of games like this.
-caution: this is extreme hyperbole-
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Seriously, why do people do this? Just STOP working 70+ hours a week. And don't tell me "they need their jobs". If your job destroys your life it's not worth it at all.
Eh? Not sure what a business model has to do with studio work culture, but okay.
Yup. Completely agreed. Couldn't put it better myself.
And shame on all of you who support this. Yes, especially you! You're the worst of the lot! You're an accomplice in this!
Young people are often very ambitious and don't care enough about their work life balance. This changes when they have their own family.
The industry is worse off because there are more sustainable over longer period of time business models available, rather than hoping to hit a wonder during the release week of a game after which it is all downhill from there until the eventual Black Friday and Christmas bumps?
What the hell are you talking about?
Do you have development knowledge or you just posted the first thing in your mind?
What's really annoying me is that these are contractors being exploited. If they were full on employees who might get to participate in all that Fortnite money, it'd still be bad but at least the people would be crunching for fat paycecks and bonuses they're trying to keep coming.
Games as a service is a symptom of the over-arching problem - namely that the industry and game publishers only run for profits while exploiting those who actually create its profits.
Again game as a service has nothing to do with this. Multiplayer games have always had to drop content and patches regularly.
Exactly.
Well, it's long established that these games are designed to use and abuse the consumer. It's all about milking them for everything they're worth often for items of minimal or questionable value.
Now it's clear that running games like Fortnite is exploitative towards the developers as well.
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Beyond nonsense. That's an issue that manifests at a studio level, not with GaaS in general. I worked at Riot for over 2 years and the attitude towards players couldn't have been further from that. People wanted to make a great game that was accessible to anyone for free, where players would buy cosmetics because they were cool and wanted to support the game, not because Riot wanted to bleed them of all their money.
There are plenty of examples of great games that use the GaaS model that are super respectful to players.
Oh for sure don't know, but more speaking to gamer demands for faster updates/fixes have their human costs.
Yeah, I suppose that's true. I'm talking more about free to play and Fortnite than anything else. I'm not thinking straight as I'm blinded by my dislike of Fortnite and everything it represents.
I don't like the GaaS model either, mind you, but I think there are examples of games of that type which treat the player well.
My hearts goes out those folks, as a lifelong contractor I know what it's like to get treated like dirt. I've gotten let go from so many jobs because I don't want to put in hours but it is what it is; I value work-life balance over every other metric concerning work. I can't imagine how they maintain those hours with family and/or relationships; my SO would break up with me so quick if I even sniffed an hour over 45 per week, that's her limit.
It's not even just a free to play issue though. There are plenty of AAA games which also implement exploitative microtranscations designed to nickel and dime players. Again tho, those decisions are made at a studio level and don't represent free to play as a whole.
Personally I'm fervently opposed to loot boxes, but their existence in some games doesn't mean the entire market of F2P and GaaS games is rotten.
Yep, "Games as a Service" is a morally reprehensible model, relying on the worst aspects of exploitative capitalism.
Expect more horror stories like Bioware, Epic, Rockstar, etc as more and more companies chase the golden goose.
Corporations will never change on their own, they either get regulated or workers need to unionize for equal footing.
Then I'll stop supporting all of them if that's the case.
I'm not sure I watched them so I'd love a link to those U3 and ME3 videos/docs
Yes, that one game did give them the valuation, and no they were not earning billions before it. No goalpost moving there, it's just the facts. In June 2012 when Tencent bought 40%, the company was valued at $825M. So what should they do when their game blows up and is the #1 game in the world, and gamers are clamoring for updates (just look at any Battlefield or Apex Legends topic here for that), should they say, "It's 6pm folks, time to go, we'll get that update out next month, it's fine."? You think that's how they'd stay #1 with competition breathing down their necks? The article talked about paying people 3x their salary in bonuses, and Epic having the best compensation in the industry. That's a nice trade-off for some hard work, especially considering nobody knows how long Fortnite will be this big.
This so much.
I've worked at 2 separate studios both working at GaaS titles, both aiming very much to be players first experiences (including a ton of research dedicated to ensuring this and talking with the higher value customers to understand their playing behaviour) and both being very much a 40hr week studios (though I can personally say that in the latter in my position it definitely tends to also vary from 40-50 based on my own personal wishes, but all extra hours are legally required to be then taken back at some point). That of course doesn't mean that pragmatic prioritization and usage of analytics isn't necessary (as we after all compete with studios that do capitalism to a more extrem end) nor that the work isn't stressful (leading a creative software projects are not easy, and less so in an market as competitive as gaming), but that isn't just because of the business model. I could just as well list a ton of benefits (both player and developer) that the business model provide, but I don't think that is necessary here.
Who are you trying to call out? Cuz it ain't Fortnite players and those that like GaaS that put Epic in this shitty situation.
