Glassdoor Confessions on Epic Games | Game Dev Unchained Episode 0199

[Music] ladies and gentlemen boys and girls welcome back to game dev Unchained the number one podcast and video show about game development and the lifestyle of game developers bringing you this one of the show is obviously myself so Larry Charles and the writer responsible for the first three episodes of our Kelly's trapped in the closet what's up I am out this is Brandon Pham welcome to another episode of game dev unchain and welcoming us yeah this is a glass door confession it's been a while and without fail developers our game develop studios are still put alright we glass torrents a company that is much beloved it's been a while been around

for a long time and it is of course epic games right epic games have been with us for over twenty years they provided all the tools a whole career I owe being here to Epic Games and Unreal Tournament yes and Unreal Tournament so I I did touch Unreal Tournament 2004 that's my first time actually playing an epic game but it was really Gears of War where I finally to start to respect him as a game developer well for me it was because then it came with Unreal IDE 2.0 and there you go and I was able to make mods and little maps for Unreal Tournament so that's where I had a lot of fun so the video around a while in to be fair right all companies go through their crunching period but what we hope is that at least in the early days I saw something with Blizzard - right where companies like in the early days of

Blizzard more hi I'm one of the co-founders they're mentioned how it was impossible for the next see without early days of crushing but it also they they grew from that you know to become the megalith they are and to realize that it's not sustainable but that's something that I feel like yes there are early mistakes but as a company have has grown and is able to kind of look at other methods to kind of deal with production schedules that hopefully they have advanced to better to better work/life balance right so it was a palm it was a pollen that we read this article months ago months ago we haven't done a glass or confession on Epic Games and this one is one of those expose articles that I felt weirdly got swept under the rug real fast right because most of the other ones from kotaku like right gamed telltale games all the huge ones even with some Mass

Effect team be Bioware guys like every single one that pointed the finger and shook it at a company had to come out with some type of public response about how they're gonna do better and how they're gonna start changing things and basically answer to the mob right epoch somehow came out of completely unscathed like there was no real public response there was no real accountability on their side and it was insane it was like back to business I felt like a couple days later it was really fast man I didn't really see too much of a ramification what was your perspective well interestingly enough and I have to I have to dance this tightrope quite well out of respect for professional colleagues then also my own personal career and I've worked but I worked disclaimer let's get this clean because I actually worked on for tonight helping

epic on creative mode yes they hired the company that I was working for to just do some like work yeah provide some content and resources for I think it create the time those creative mode it was before it was announced right and so yeah I got to see like behind the curtain a little bit yeah and I guess from where I stood was like the people were working hard no one that I dealt with was unpleasant everybody was like trust everyone trusted each other and they knew that there were tall tasks ahead but for Morissette it seemed like a team of like at least proud and motivated developers even under like serious constraints yeah I will say like there was a person that I worked with probably more often than the rest of the team that I knew that like he was probably like like I felt bad like there a lot be up late like doing my own thing but like I'd send an email just because I was like oh let me send this it's on my mind and then I'm getting like a 2 a.m. response like what the [ __ ] are you still doing you have everything and then the letters like oh I'm just doing this so I'm just doing that and in my mind

and they're on the East Coast yeah all these girls so even later it's like do go home you know my heart my heart went out to the team all while I was working with them I'll say yeah I didn't get like any sense of like disgruntlement though so like even though I feel like sure the people's faces were to the grindstone I didn't perceive personally and this isn't politics this is just complete honest and if I get in trouble for this then I get in trouble for this I didn't perceive anybody who was like disgruntled or who like was about the same yeah but I could tell that like they were always under the gun the blow is definitely easier to crunch on a successful game because then there's publix justification and then you know privately there's money in your pocket yes so there's a justification that comes with it with successful products when you crunch on them right so the only thing when it comes to a problem is yeah one year on a shitty game you're crunching and you're kind of promoting

shitty practices that isn't working right that's when you start to be disgruntled yeah like we know people that work there personally I want to visit in North Carolina just recently and the the people there are genuinely yes both the guys that I talk to and actually had to move right in north count as most employees have to when they're at Epic Games right they're not from North Carolina and usually right they're from out of town yeah and it's rough place to live in if you're used to other things rough to go from California to Carolina yeah that's a huge move that's a tough move but like looking at the conditioner mortadella yeah of where the industry is right epic game is one of those like made men bulletproof type of studio that you know you're gonna be a part of something great and you know it's easier now all right because fortnight is the greatest

game that every game is kind of trying to emulate there the new World of Warcraft the other we knew yeah I'm serious yes and so there's a there's a they're trying they're fumbling while they're running right trying to catch up to what they accidentally fell into is worldwide phenomenon where every celebrity athlete is talk show host is kind of referencing them in everyday conversation it's it's a game that has broke the mold into public awareness right there hasn't been a game like that forever right maybe the latest was Pokemon go but for tonight took that in like a hundred times it right in terms of revenue stream in terms of everybody's conversation and so a similar issue to what Steve as the air they're a small company right at first when the fort night thing broke out they're growing they're probably over a thousand by now

and they're constantly constantly growing and trying to hopefully remedy this crunching problem to kind of keep up with their success a problem that has been illustrated by other renowned developers like respawn when apex became a very similar route like a mega success day three week one week to tens of millions of counts 25 million accounts like these are the type of announcements that we saw that the growth rate was actually a little fast in the fortnight at the same timeframe the sustainability was gone quickly because the season passes right I I don't I don't buy in about how they bought they did right they did by advertising his extremists sure their interest is there but it was a solid game by one on developers right so the sustainability is partially that but mostly was a good game they made a conscious decision not to do the fortnight formula

where they would hire more and keep their guys and gals in the office to to meet the demands right supplied the demands so they that was very respectable and I feel like it's a weird position that epoch is at because they are in the frontlines of something truly great like once in a decade type of type of project right it becomes like a weird morality things like do we want to keep this up we're the only ones that have been doing this I've faced these problems we want to stop the gravy train you know and it's very easy to kind of judge them on that so as a developer I'm kind of weird like isn't a clear case to me as like activision laying off 800 people or Bioware crunching people for a terrible game right this is like kind of the opposite it's a good game and they're the first and only right now

that is dominating the market with this phenomenon in a way where we're looking at Super Bowls and they're doing the dances you know there's no game like that ever they're culturally and yeah the cultural phenomenon is like crazy impactful I will be in history books as the like I don't even know there's gonna be another game that gonna be able to do that not not really right not anytime soon not anytime soon be dead and gone before we get the next this level of like global adoption for like that so it'll be a while to look at it as a developer working on the game to look at it as Tim Sweeney as the boss of the company looking at this like this is justifying what we're doing here we are changing history and this is the sentiment that the Great's share like you look at Elon Musk and how the most common question that he gets is like how the [ __ ] are you doing all the things

that you're doing running three plus companies and being able to have time and his you know he always get [ __ ] it on on like Mew there's no great things or what was this quote that you can't achieve great things without crunching essentially is what he's saying I'm paraphrasing of course but he's saying that no great things have been achieved from nine to five well I also look at his strategy and say though that like but we see a shift in focus right like we'll see oh he's doing a thing with the boring company and then he wanes there and he goes like now SpaceX is doing a thing and now he's back to promoting a Tesla thing so it's like these companies are set up I think he kind of bounced I think I feel like he bounces from like I'm on this project okay that one's done right I'm back over here on this yeah there's some crazy detail going on it's a juggling thing for sure but like anybody that is at that level would always justified yeah crunching is cool I think that has direct hands-on right I think you can be

successful without crunch I think crunch the reason why there's crunch is because we have incredible high expectations and this lower exactly this like driving bottom-line saving ideal business kind of mindset yeah it doesn't have to be that way like people want the best they can make for as cheap and as quick as possible yeah and it is like really taking quality of life out of the people responsible for those as well it's called Glasper confession so in tradition we take a look at a company class store reviews and one dive deep and in this case there are articles attributed to the company's recent success and failures we go through that paragraph by paragraph give our thoughts and then we have a conclusion at the end if it's true or not so from here some basics I want to dive into recommend to a friend 70% approve of CEO 90% way to go epic and Tim that's that's those are good market those are good marks in my opinion those are good marks and I actually believe them work yeah right see you I think nobody can

argue that Tim Sweeney is like doing a lot of crazy things on the tool side for developers and on the gamer side it's like for evil for them to turn around and have one of their like renowned designers kind of walk away right cliffie be with 10 cent kind of buying stake in buying a lot of people out all right and then them having like a somewhat danger project like Paragon and what fortnight was before right they were like slowly disappearing as a developer in terms of respect right because they sold off their Gears of War license they were really betting on Paragon more so I think on fortnight fortnight was a six year stakes your development time Paragon even though they look at back and say that hey it was successful for though it is the you know those are millions of assets that they read about Paragon is the fact that they release the assets for free on the asset easier

I'm sorry from a game design perspective so have you played it yes okay so it was I would not attempt the traditional mobile strategies or like game design with shooting because shooting is like I'm looking at something it's within my reticle I'm expecting to be able to do damage with it yeah because of MOBAs isometric view you can actually see distance ranges and make sense of like what you're doing how you're doing it and that game heavily relied on the shooting mechanics which meant that like the camera perspective is just wrong it's a game it's a difficult sell for what a moment is okay I think that the traditional tower a defense attack to the core MOBA style yeah hard to do with shooting the way that Peregrine tried to do it and then also there was like not really a believable fantasy world are not necessarily believable but not a fantasy world that I was excited to invest right I think that I didn't get any sort of significant hooks or relationships any of the characters or gameplay that's the sense that I got it was confusing the same way that fortnight was confusing right if gears of war shooters or like the most applicable to any gamers to see

it a trailer or screen show I was like yeah I want to buy that game fort now was a step below that it's like what is it a mechanic you got to build forts and then you fight you fight zombies like you can't expect fortnight originally to sell better than Gears of War franchise right and that was the the the route they were going down as they were testing it out nobody was really playing or was super excited it was a novel idea it was nice but it wasn't like gonna sell off the shelves like the way it was the main thing that I'm seeing in my own experience in foreign I saved the world was just that like the zombies I was fighting against were not really the greatest AI enemies you fight against yeah so the skill cap enjoyment for me being good or being shitty at that game is like really small yeah like to be good at that game took maybe an extra 15 minutes of trying out a couple of guns yeah versus being a brand new player with any sort of skills you carry over from another game you probably be very competitive in that game and what made things difficult was

just more zombies yeah with fortnight itself the skill cap potential is so much more vast because you're playing against nothing but other human players at all times you have different strategies you have evolving strategies who have team tactics who are cheating who whatever whatever yeah you being good at the fortnight like battle royale part way different skill and so because of that I can see why more people especially now where it seems like every game is like competitive yeah we love doing something better than someone and then telling them that they're worse than us like that is the magic formula for game designer you know yeah for not giving you so many more opportunities to really enjoy what it feels like modern game players are doing right now in droves yeah which is showing that they're better than people and then rubbing it in yeah which was way better of an experience cell to me then just being marginally better or having better weapons and we're defending this for putting some traps and just killing the zombies yeah i'm after us stage after stage after stage after stage yeah it was it was a hard sell and so they were

in a period where they had to these flops right about to happen and the Unreal Engine there were in a period where a lot of these kind of like what steam is going through right third-party publishers they're party game publishers are leaving with their game to create their own marketplace unreal face a similar issue right where they third-party developers were creating their own engine EA Ubisoft all these mega companies that used to support Unreal Engine we're leaving kind of doing their own so their customer base wasn't as big on the Unreal Engine front right and so they were faced with all these issues and it was a really I feel like a dark period for epic to kind of turn things around and man did they turn things around right now they have the enterprise sector there's a lot of games that are coming out using Unreal Engine now that our mega franchises right so at the same time fortnight right they were able to

come up with an idea yeah that was bad all right now you know never been only done once before what they were able to figure that fire I I'm not alive man like even having a personal experience there I'm still gonna give them [ __ ] for like the the rollout of their version of battle royale and like what was my verses or what was generally accepted battle royale cannon and what was pubsey specific game ideas yes yeah don't they'll never look back they'll never look back it's a move that they would say it was a billion-dollar move no it was all profit right so with the this rating up from the bat yes I can see how there's a high respect for the leadership there I'm actually kind a surprised how low their ratings are on everything else but we'll we'll dig into it so right now I usually like to filter it from all will read wanna on the top all right so all right sorry great benefits okay good I gotta up this font

yeah I can't I can take a stab at it okay great benefits great food good management and ability to climb the corporate ladder in ten reviews see yeah if you want to increase that I'm straining it's on your right screen there you go all right cool cons decent amount of crunch during certain points in the year and six reviews work-life balance at times was difficult to manage that feels honest that feels honest without being like dis grumble vain I'm not gonna protect epic here obviously this glass door confessions we're reading other people's words but I can I can read that and feel like that's honest you know I mean and I also will caveat that again this is Glassdoor confessionals a lot of times when things go right people don't say anything because that's what they expected yeah and people are incredibly vocal when things go wrong so we take that with a

grain of salt but to see like this level of honesty I actually feel like that's that's honest here's a certain level of honesty that I like right so wonderful five five everything five on everything I've been working an epic means full time for less than a year so these are probably the new hires for you probably know this person yeah people centric sophisticated top town no egos yeah long hours will be counter effective to the work how can you give five stars when you have a complaint I think that's the only thing right if you go under the five stars top left table and it shows yes so the only thing that he took a hit always work-life balance I see I see I happy to do my best yeah all right let's go catcha works at epic all right let's see most recent I want to see the latest and greatest the more people they hire the better their review scores are gonna be because you have a bigger workforce to start balancing off yeah hopefully hopefully more to manage for

the production team but I can imagine that for the content creation team like sweet on this week and then next week you're the guy that's on but we're both environment artists so we're both prop artists over both let me go back I guess what scares me about being in epics position right now is like when fortnight starts to wane right let's just I mean that point is gonna come at some point I don't know what it is and I don't know how far fast they can expand and I hope that they can continue to carry this many people but let's assume they don't have someone else in the chamber they have grown to such a size with so many developers right that like the downfall might be well time to start cutting some fat yeah and so that's the part that scares me about it does growing so Vic's of F has fortnight is already showing a sharp decrease right we're talking about hundreds of percentage of viewership and and mplayer right so I don't know what the next few months will look like because like you said there's just certain there's a

certain time in the game design of a product where the gamers just lose interest and there's not an seasons in the Canon - to win that back because people do move on eventually yeah or at least like it's gonna wind down to level Wow yeah I think for tonight it's gonna be it's gonna be fine even like 10 years from now I can see something out of this for tonight thing is still gonna be around 10 years from now will it be as big as original fortnight's battle royale I don't know I'm not gonna make that prediction my hope is that they take the Mario approach and start like going branching out for tonight is a universe that has experiences in it other than battle that's where they need to go that's where they need to go I'm pretty sure that this that has to be what let's beam time let my models where's the fortnight's showed exactly power a different game go to different mediums I'm surprised there's no toys there are toys the grocery store well I'm

surprised there's no Netflix show I didn't where's the shows I didn't think they would make a fortnight toy cuz like it was action figure like GI Joe sighs and I'm like I think the kid who you're trying to aim that toy at would rather have the skin in the game now then then Nick toy toy unless the toy came with the skin that would be cool toy to life man so uh it's cook halt you'll love it or hate it I believe that I worked at Epic Games for full three years best-in-class talent sounds like kanji working on world's best technology amazing generously reference to kanji the cons are the company is a personality cults the CEO isn't himself really driving it but the president obsesses over everything and has created our organization wide paranoia damn now I want to know more relax and enjoy your success don't make everyone live in fear Wow well I mean like that's interesting well it's true when you have so much power as

a company to say that you don't want to be a part of this success we don't need you we can replace you in any second you don't think people will move to North Carolina and sit in your chair right now yeah the crunch or your contract won't get excited and that's the move right that I've been hearing a lot it's like everyone gets on as a contract basis and we'll review you in six months and depending how much you want it code as in like crunch how far in can I Ram it yeah are you oh you know you you you either have the job or not and these are the bonuses that we give out you know take it or leave it and that is such so much power on the employer side there will to kind of if that was the time and maybe it is I would imagine it would be a lot less than a 90% approval rating unless only 10% of the people didn't go all the way through you know what I mean

anyway it's I'm taking it with a grain of salt yeah it's hard for me to see what I mean you have this culture I mean this is what is speaking to you have everyone kind of buying into this and you look and feel bad if you go home early I mean it's this is oh yeah I see that you see that there's a pressure but this is a pressure that you are and you and I are familiar with with unsuccessful studios to see this at the very top man at the most not just the number one game of the year number one game of the century middle it's just disheartening to know that even with success there is always greed to push you over the edge where there's a problem with work-life balance when you can definitely afford it right and so this is where it's like yes they are at the front lines of doing something very new right this is not just like another Call of Duty or whatever right yeah this is new this is a new

phenomenon there's a they're growing with the punches they're hiring as much as people as possible but there's a there's a toxicity within the studio now that you're expected to crunch and everyone already signed up to say yes and now you're you know you don't have a say you know you're in North Carolina you're in the middle and it's like if you relocated down there that's six months you wait you weren't thinking about six months when you sign that no in about two three years yes minimum and that's when you that's when you get got man that's when you get got but even if you crunch for those six months the full timers are crunching - it's a never-ending cycle you know you're not just gonna get the contract full-time and then you can finally rest now you're constantly ton your wife or husband at home like hey I got a everyone's here so I was not envious yeah that's an honest assessment and

that sucks man yes that sucks like here's a studio that can afford it but they're not doing it all right let's look at a positive time you know analysts this is from June 2nd recent whoa look at that perfect perfect score see we're perfect yep perfect of course I've been working here a full time for more than a year some of the best benefits in the industry still actually a small company so everyone has a voice management you can say what you want but we're not gonna listen acknowledge his hard work and shows appreciation only the best tech is used here yes lots of new people some teams are dealing with cultural rebalancing ever-changing product means things happen fast it sounds like a very producer to woods I'll say this I can I can see a non content creator giving this five stars across the board right because I mean how much Excel can you really do yeah

that's a general statement but you get what I'm trying to say yeah like when the features that are gonna be in the next week's patch aren't done yet yeah it's the artists engineers animators sound designers whoever's responsible for those features that are the ones were like busting keyboards trying to get this stuff done yeah I can see if someone being an analyst and I don't know I'm ignorant to the responsibilities and how it's done but I can see why that numbers are up yeah I could easily see why that's right versus somebody who like I would love to hear like a like a character artists perspective or the designer even all right let's go to April 20 people stay for the benefits read that one I've been working at Epic Games full-time for more than a year some benefits are great some benefits are great others are just there for show 100% paid health insurance big name big player in the video game company there are some really cool people here the

employee events are fun yes perks they have a really amazing summer family picnic they pull out all the stops and really go above and beyond to make it enjoyable experience for everyone you get a mandatory week off for Christmas and two weeks off in the summer I would rather reverse that personally this just me personally I would love to weeks off during the time when everyone else I know and love has two weeks off first of all you're talking to a guy who the last two jobs have been unlimited vacation so this is [ __ ] like if you're a company like epic you should be having a limited vacation it is the norm now in the tech industry I don't think so I don't think for tonight we'll see unlimited vacation because now the decision makers and the content makers in order to make sure that the business is where the game is very slow to man the last thing they need is like hey um so I'm the leave here and I'm gonna go on a week and a half vacation the mobile industry the tech industry in some savvy

game companies already moving on some lunatic you well the thing is like in Netflix this case right now who's expecting the next week's patch notes for Netflix you know what sure but if the mobile industry right our close cousin right here right and I worked on movin issue we're talking about updates every they're a product a product that's already out it's already making money supported yeah it's already supported for tonight is more like a mobile industry right now they can afford and forecast the ability to have people on on the minification right they're not doing that because they're traditionally game company traditional game companies are on this old three weeks a year to the model it's all dude it's like you put a lot of them though I guess my concern would be yeah so sure let's say we do introduce everyone can go on vacation whenever whenever but I also know that like I've seen what happens when we don't have content that goes out on schedule we get a dip that may end up not necessarily

costing us money but opportunity costing us 40 million dollars yeah you know what I mean yeah so we've agreed to this cadence of like we want that forty million dollars every time we want our 270 to actually be 310 you know what I mean so if two key players have taken a vacation and it looks like we're gonna miss that forty million dollars that is an opportunity cost forty million dollar vacation that two people just took yeah so in my mind the reason why it's gonna be hard for people at that company is because of opportunity cost of them being like we for once in our career yeah as Epic Games employees I don't care how long you've been there they have never had anything this big that they've owned at their disposal no this is my biggest this is the height of where they are so I where they they're doing everything in their power to get every drop out of it while it's producing it this rate yeah unfortunately that means it's gonna take a lot from yeah they know the gravy train is gonna stomp yeah they're gonna squeeze the [ __ ] out of it to make sure

that they had the full benefit I understand that and that is where as a game developer and as a gamer I'm like I want a weird crossword with these guys because like it's justified it never is right your natural inclination is to say working crunch hours is not going to justify anything ever because you're basically squeezing the life out of your developers right so let's read one more review before we get into the politics I've ever worked great benefits terrible people I want to see terrible well look you know there's always approves of CEO that's that is a common thing obviously you got 90% but oh wait no there was disapproves I see you but they don't recommend all right I mean let me switch the screen all right so let's do this I'll worked at Epic Games for more than wait yeah pros are get free pizza in ice cream every two weeks every two weeks when you start describing food as a perk you know what type of review it's kind of each full stock kitchen lots of going from movies nice parties free crossmembers

Khan's co-workers leads and management are absolutely the worst and my 10 plus years of industry experience I never seen people actually telling the other people if person X joins their team they will quit there's a lot of hate between people and there's issues embracing new people into the teams as the mentality that just because you work at epic you're better than everyone else is something horrible to be proud of fights to become leads and fights between art directors and directors don't listen to anyone make it really hard to be happy working here also women I've never seen a place mistreating women so poorly from the serious sexual harassment that constantly happens daily we're emphasizing to the QA girl being told she was dressing to sex she's sexy she might be asking for us something needs to be done if it hasn't already she might be asking for it advice in management listen to people when they give feedback on your games fix the in fights inside the company and struggles for power struggles for power men you

want to know why because imagine getting like a bonus that was like twice your salary for the year yeah I'm sure people want that job yeah like we're seeing you we know how much you guys are making every month yeah where's my piece oh that guy in that position has that piece all right how do I work my way to get to that because look at the developers the same thing that I was saying about epic never having something like this on their hands look at the developers yeah right as a game developer you are if you see a bonus right like I would say like congratu-fucking-lations because it is so hard to sell games these days yeah let alone to be getting a bonus from the biggest selling game the most million-dollar revenues every month yeah like the amount that they could be paying people in bonuses probably like just holy [ __ ] you know the World Series of Poker losses for some of the top level guys so I can see why it would be so competitive is because when are you gonna see that again in your career as a developer you're so close if you if it's

if game development is a young man's game Yeah right and which or woman but if a young person's game which I kind of think it is I don't see a lot of 60 year olds doing what they do in our industry a scanner - how many 25 year olds I see yeah you people are trying to strike people know that like they're gonna get burnt out and they're no longer you got to be able to make money off of what they've been making their money on career-wise yeah and what happens from that day till the rest of their life yeah so getting a like four hundred thousand dollar bonus I can see why there's fighting yeah I just want to take a moment and appreciate that I don't have shitty co-workers anymore like the moment that I got out of the office setting I colors become brighter the air smells better like it's a different type of thinking I do I mean I did we talking about being Unchained we talked about the fear of going into that realm but every day I wake up now man I'm just so thankful because it is a wool covering

our eyes we've been taught to kind of go into this world to get a career get a job and that's the only way you can live or die right until you're 65 as soon as we started doing this full-time like I realize how much of a trap that becomes because within any game like every game development studio that I've been through it's kind of like this own its own colony right having its own hierarchy of people that you have to like depending on who you are if you're vicious climb over and stomp to make sure you have that key position key salary that is throttled right that is at like a it's a threshold that no matter where you go that's that's it that's all you're gonna make there's no yes you can try to help with with that with bonuses but even with bonuses we've been graced with life-changing bonuses it's not anywhere near that you feel like hey I hit the lottery I can retire

it's more like just enough to keep you from leaving and that I think even with fortnight I assure you these guys are not walking away unless your topic set the regulars are just having enough to have like a here's a like nil it gets chunk four for the next three months if I was a shitty company owner I would want your bonus to be just enough to make you happy big poke a big purchase for yourself that you probably would have had to save quite a lot of time for yeah maybe get one or two problems off your plate yeah I don't want it to alleviate all your problems because obviously if I like give you a winning lotto ticket you might not even work at all any people will leave so I see why companies themselves are like in the it's a very tough game to be like hey I could give away this 10% that we've made out of a hundred million dollars now to these four developers that helped us yeah yeah which each one of them would be like yeah I'm gone you know so I understand why I like the bonus culture is such a it's such a thing and like I keep seeing

new and newer and newer ways that like you have to commit to the time to get the bonus and look like okay here's the bonus but it's gonna be paid out in chunks and it's only gonna be this much so you're gonna have a crude like we're gonna owe you eight hundred thousand dollars but we're gonna give it away to you fifty thousand dollars at a time yeah and if you leave you don't get any other it's [ __ ] no no but it's true it's true it's true yeah a lot of the bonus I've had yeah it's it's been more like cashed out yeah in chunks they want you to stay they want you to stay yet they want you to keep needing the job that you keep doing the job so that the execs and the shareholders and whoever's invested in the company keeps getting what you actually want is that which is royalties right so there's a huge there's definitely a huge gap between maybe the leads getting their chunk of money because if you're getting huge chunks of money as a lead I on fortnight or any other big projects you want to stay another three months to get that

big why wouldn't you right all right all those management wise you're doing that type of work but in the trenches is a different story right so the guys that are working in the trenches that are delivering the skins or whatever they're doing to keep 49 going they're not at all close to the exact level of chunk there's a gap there's huge gap there's no there's not even a progression of likes to senior to lead right there's point gonna be a huge gap in bonus pay outs because that is on purpose they they want to keep the the grunts working and they want to keep the liens who are making the difference happy because they can't lie to those guys they can't lie to the leads of a department and be like hey we made 100 million but here's just enough it's like [ __ ] that [ __ ] I'm a [ __ ] lead on the multi-million dollar franchise are you kidding me where is my [ __ ] chunk they can't they can't pull that over your eyes with the grunts they said

there's a thousand of you this is your portion becomes justified if I were if I were a company that was like bonus I guess I would probably do maybe a happy middle yeah which is I know I owe you this money because I said I would pay it and it's a bonus so I wanted to feel like a bonus your salary isn't reflected in the money that I'm paying you but I also don't want you to quit so I would probably do like whatever the bonus is you're gonna get that within one year you know I'm not gonna make you stay five six years but it'll be 25% every quarter yeah just whatever the numbers they're pretty much how stock it sounds like you're getting a big chunk and you know that if you quit that's 75% that's let is gone yeah so you get the next chunk if you quit that's fair I think that's a nice medium for both sides because it kind of be like hey if at a year you want to walk away all that that's completely fine you gave us a good last year and we appreciate your worth but to completely like hi the algorithms to actually have to do the bonus and then the payout it's

unpredictable like you don't even give a front value this is how much you're gonna get a lot of these bonuses are sometimes dropped the next day in your bank in your bank right without knowing exactly how much you were cheated out of or whatever I would want to know my transparency and it starts with that it's like because I've been we've been at a bonus to do before and like got a sizable bonus right like I would never say no to free money now but when you weigh it out is it really free that's a whole another time essentially what I'm getting into is like what killed me the most was that like someone behind the scenes basically will just say I think this person gets this much now not here's an agreement made on how bonuses the mad news will be split yeah before we even sold a copy yeah like okay Larry here's how it works you're in this tier this much this percent goes to that tier spread amongst whoever's in that tier yeah cool so then I should be able to do the math and ten times out of ten our number should match yeah if even once you just like go

through 300 people and you're like oh this is how much people get yeah and then let's say you move that data you have to redo it again if anyone's numbers changed and at all it's cheating yeah yeah well you can't sign up to that I wouldn't commitment wise it's hard to really put in your full effort knowing that you know the system's great so let's tell me it's 10% and we only made a buck and I get ten cents like I'm fine with that if we make 10 million I better get my 10% yeah I don't want to hear anything else yes so this is an article that came out months ago this is the article that we referenced at the beginning episode saying that this came out during the times of expose articles like tearing down companies but somehow epic ansis was able to skirt around that and was didn't really answer to it right they just kind of walked away unscathed and so for tonight success led to months of intense crunch at Epic Games the popularity of for tonight is obvious right epic games has grown to become

like the crazy phenomena that it is and it also lets a months of intense crunch for epic employees and contractors someone home say they felt extreme pressure to work grueling hours to maintain fortnight's success and profitability resulting in toxic stressful environment at the company and so for them not answering for them to not even say anything publicly this is we got a still continuing based on the recent reviews right a lot of it's still talking about work-life balance as an issue I'll skip ahead here though some contract staff were paid overtime developers report a culture of fear in which there was so expected to pull in long hours as part of their job some reported suffering health issues after working consecutive monthly months of 780 hour plus weeks right let me open the font

right here I can't really see too well crunch is the name given I really like it can you hold down ctrl while I scroll you know just controlling them yeah there we go perfect thank you some such as game workers Newsnight are calling for game industry workers to unionize in order to protect their rights many workers in the industry are hired as contractors for further limiting their rights and that you know a lot of these guys you know don't don't be fooled to thinking that everyone's a full-timer a lot of these they're hiring up to a thousand people right in the past year and a half or a lot of them are contractors proved to us you know that you want to be here and it helps them in many ways just like they'll get the hours that they need to complete these like really quick turnarounds but also helps kind of just like siphon out all

the bad seeds right bad attitudes during the process and still get in the work they have to they don't have to vet through them before giving them benefits it's like let's use them up and throw them out if they don't continue to perform very dangerous and so epic launch fortnight Battle Royale in September 2017 as a free game right because you know they were brilliant because they just were able to come up with this idea right with if we're anticipating all this turnover and epic from like how they if churning is like their business strategy then I would be so happy if I was Red Storm yeah because there's got it they don't even have to like advertise for jobs whatsoever because there's like edges we're gonna pick up all the collateral oh man I'd be so happy if I was North Carolina have two decisions do I move again or do I stick around until I find something

better and yeah so companies around there are gonna benefit from epic employees dropped onto an island okay they're describing the game save the world was the original players unknown was on the Windows BC as a competitor and Fortnight battle royale quickly became a cultural phenomenon or any epic millions of dollars per day right and funding rapid growth that the company is currently the most popular game in the world that's crazy true especially among children that's a hard demographic to break into its regulars updates including new weapons and map alterations are followed a tally by millions of players yes and some of for tonight's top streamers have become multi millionaires just by playing the game so for tonight Barry I was part of a broad trend in gaming known as games as a service so polygon interviewed some current and former employees including full-time staff managers and contractors they signed

non-disclosure agreements limiting their ability to speak openly about the company's operation some examples are our work on average 70 hours per week said one employee there's probably at least 50 or even 100 other people epic working along in ours I know people who pull in 100 plus weeks 100 hour plus weeks the company gives us unlimited time off oh ok so they do give unloaded time off but it's almost impossible to take the time see that's what I'm saying that food it's the standard now but it is illusion right the most people when I tell them all I have them Lumet a line is like oh yeah because they don't really do that it's like no this come fleet does and it's like what are you kidding me is you serious because the good tech companies realize the long-term benefits of employees and contractors being happy if you have a good employee if you have somebody who's like literally contributing to the bottom line of your company you want them to be happy you know a good employee is the first person to recognize that they have a good situation yeah right so the last thing that

they're gonna do is just take six months off just because yeah they're gonna lose that ability to take two weeks off whenever they want you know it's unlimited vacation I assume is not as costly as a lot of people worry about I think if you're worried that like your employees are just gonna disappear you've probably got the wrong employees you're forcing them to stay there versus them actually wanting to be there yeah I mean you budget that Sally aside anyways right it's not an extra loss on your company to give that full salary to that employee you have deadlines for that year and it is the employees responsibilities and make sure those deadlines are still met even if they go on vacation yeah so letting them kind of dictate that on their own you know very fast when milestones are being missed so overall it kind of balance itself out in my opinion you know if they start missing deadlines those are red flags a couple of those happens then you can get rid of that guy or gal in most cases those are terrible people it's it's it's

hard for businesses to realize that their success is based on the backs of people in 2019 because everything is so instant is so expected right that like you forget that oh Joan just had a baby or this person is going to get married or this person's father is going through something or this person lost their mother you are hiring people to do work but they're still people they still have life things that happen you know and so you can demand expect crunch like you are you are you you cannot treat people like fax machines and copiers and expect that they're gonna operate that way it is always going to tax it's always gonna bite you in the ass if anything is gonna happen to you you're gonna run out of people to churn through at some point yeah then what yeah so going back to the article the biggest problem is that we're patching all the time the executives are focused on keeping fortnight popular for as long as possible especially with all the new competition that's coming in a representative or

epic conceded that workers had endured stream working hours people are working very hard and for tonight I'm waiting for the p-word to pop it in another epic efforts says a spokesperson an email interview extreme situations such as 100 hour plus weeks are incredibly rare and those instances we seek to immediately remedy them to avoid reoccurrence no you're not but me meeting player demand and maintaining against a minute up has forced some to endure ongoing crunch the executives keep reacting and changing things said the source everything has to be done immediately we're not allowed to spend time on anything if something breaks a weapon says then we can't just turn it off and fix it with the next patch it has to be fixed immediately and all the while we're still working on next week's patch it's brutal I hardly sleep I'm grumpy at home I have no energy to go out getting a weekend away from work is a major achievement if I take Saturday off I feel guilty I'm not being forced to work this way but if

I don't then the job was a job won't get done they said that the sudden success of fortnight had created difficulties achieve a far higher level of success than we had ever anticipated everybody thought epic responded to the success with incredible vigor and the commitment the 419 rapidly expanded the game to grow the audience the Unreal Engine team began a broad effort to optimize for 60 frames per second and support seven platforms others throughout the company moved to fortnight to maintain momentum alright going down I know some people were just refused to work weekends and then we missed a deadline because they're part of their package wasn't completed and they were fired people are losing their jobs because they don't want to work these hours it's true man make room I had friends come to me and say I can't take this anymore I friends break down in tears the crunch is constant we work typically 50 to 60 hour weeks and up for two or 70 hours on occasion if I was acted to stay on they

often look at me if I was actively stupid officially you don't have to keep working but reality stick back down and we'll be here for a while if you did not do overtime that was a mark against your character yeah ma'am the peer pressure is real all management meant wanted was to people who are disposable though a situation was come in and doings many knowledge we need you to they booked up the contractors in this situation where if they don't do that over time they know they're not coming back one senior guy was to just get more bodies that's what the contractors were called bodies and then we were done with them we can just dispose them they can be replaced with fresh people don't have the toxic nature of being just going oh yeah this is classic crunch I mean just reading that as I break in my heart man I mean this is just where it leads to you men there is no positivity with people being and feeling overworked it

does such damage to your social life to you're going to the office to everything right there is no positiveness even with infinite money and bonuses coming through you know when you work on a game that development time and you're in the office that is from age whatever to age whatever that is forever gone and that is something that people need to to just responders five years it's gone it's gone what do you remember about yourself or your life if you're very smart with your money you can actually look at your investment portfolio and see that money grow right but most people would just spend it all right most people would just spend it and you have nothing to reflect on because you're either trying to keep up bro I paid off half my college student loans in one swipe things in Call of Duty's yeah yes but

you know these type of issues cropping up our issues that even crunching our fortnight doesn't sound that great right even the payoff is better than most games surrounded by great the best talents right at certain point it's an assembly line how how much can you celebrate in an assembly line even if it is the greatest assembly line ever created there's just a certain point of no return where you're just sacrificing it's so hard it's so hard to do business these days it's so hard to be successful you're up against so much there's so many businesses that start and fail there's so many careers that start and feel like I understand why there's this like hyper greed slash competitiveness but then when you are in a position that you don't need to be hyper greedy and then I still see it it's like it's very interesting to me

like I would say fortnight is makes enough money now that they can do the right thing for their employees they could completely do the right thing and say you know what look everyone's gonna work 45 hours a week and we'll just commit to that and that's that's a vacation like even though it's more than 40 to say 45 is more than what any other regular company is expecting people to do right but let's even just say 40 let's just say you're gonna do eight hours a day forty hours a week and we're gonna look at ya epic can do that they're deciding not to yeah because again the opportunity cost of but well we see you know 310 million going down to 110 million now we look at that as a loss we're losing that money because we're not getting it but then I asked well where does that money go like what initiatives are so important that you're willing to like literally kill people actually I don't want to use literally that way because I was using it figuratively but saying literally to like rebel emphasize these people are killing themselves over trying to make

this extra revenue but then where how is ever gonna shut down if they don't make 310 million this month I'd only make 110 million this month I don't think so yeah even close no no the this is just basically a low respect on talent right because they are fine with a revolving door companies are ya know no company has been burnt yet yes the churn hasn't gotten to the point of no return where more people are being eaten than being created right so like essentially you're getting people just making a stop to collect their bonuses and get the hell out and that's the culture that you're creating and as any sane person that are working through these crunches it's a different type of reputation like it used to be I want to retire that biggest I just want to cash in cash out because this is not sustainable hey we're fine it's like I don't want to use

the term prostitution yeah but like I kind of get a feeling of that where it's like look I'm gonna do this thing it's gonna be bad for me it's not gonna help me it's probably gonna hurt me it's gonna take a lot out of me but I'm gonna get such a significant financial opportunity that whatever happens after that I think will be much better off had I not done this you know that it hurts man yeah I feel so bad like I feel so bad for for developers when I looked down and I would really like to we've been through that right and the industry has gotten so bad where this seems like a good choice the epic right this is as good as it gets hey man you got a job on for tonight and you're getting bonuses sure you're working like the dickens but yeah after four night is done you'll be smooth sailing there kid yeah and that those are the choices that game developers are looking and so most of the talent is going to epic right now because they are accepting an application because they feel like you know I don't know what the

[ __ ] is going on blizzard what the hell is valve is doing you know all the greats right now are suffering right now riot man they keep grabbing you ass what do I do it's a weird it's a weird era right now four very talented senior developers like weird all where else would I go guys if this is the best choices that we have who are the biggest game companies ten years ago and then ten years before that and then in the infancy of games ten years before that like stuff is gonna change yeah the market the industry is gonna change but then maybe just from a macroeconomic level the depressant the depressing feeling that I'm having right now that I'm trying to like come to grips with and I won't be email after this but I'm probably gonna be thinking a lot about this during the week is just that like I see big-time company corporations just doing a lot of this type of strategy which is every person is replaceable outsource everything like our executive staff is really who we care about and anyone

underneath us are peasants holding up the fair oh yeah we whip and whip and whip and once they're back break we bring another person into wit it's not just a game industry I'm seeing this actually across like Foxconn iPhone stuff you're seeing these stories everywhere this is what this is what this is how business is being done now yeah and obviously you have to make [ __ ] money like no one there's not a lot of farmers out there who are like oh I'm completely off the grid because even the government doesn't want you to be off the grid they want you to be in the system somehow someway yeah it did [ __ ] needs to change and I think that shareholders who don't give a [ __ ] about the people who make the thing they just want their money to be bigger like that attitude is really bothersome they like to look at 4/10 and say we have our 310 million we have to make 310 million at all costs mmm right do we need it no are we willing to not have that way no because who knows five years from now

when we don't have for tonight we may only be making 3 million a year wouldn't you be glad we were making 3 10 right now yeah I don't know I'm sad like I'm legitimately sad right now yeah yeah it's an old article that we read a few months ago during that whole kind of pointing finger at companies meaning to take responsibility epoch somehow skated around this right there wasn't a huge backlash that we saw from other companies which is weird I don't know what kind of I don't know we need to really look into that why is that the case for some money well I mean that that concludes this class to a confession we never end on a happy note because we just exposed or at least confirmed all the complaints but we're always here we're always looking at ways

to improve for game developers out there that are trapped that feels trapped you know hopefully these type of sessions kind of help you rethink what's important in your life and you know I I recently saw like like a thing that I've keep forgetting to bring up where there was like a valedictorian speech that was being made by a student and he spent like basically for the full year are they crunching and making sure that he got those acknowledgment and his whole speech was instead of celebrating you know his his win or being recognized he basically spent the whole speech saying that yeah all this doesn't matter ideally regret what I did the past year to achieve the success that I've achieved and now that I chief I'm standing here before you saying that you know the importance of life is to all the social connections you know all the little times that I spent with people and that I kind of turned my back on the last year and I'm glad that I went through this because I'm realizing it as

a senior and not when I'm 60 and man it was deep because we get caught in the situation like we're always working and what's the next step but constantly ignoring the relationship that we have and but it's true at the end of the day when I sit down or lie down in my bed I'm thinking about you know the people around me more so than the work you know or anything that I'm doing selfishly right it's like you know the friends that I make or the family connections that I make so hopefully you guys can get get a get something out of that I know I did alright I'm hoping that the leaders in our industry would help turn things around but you know this this episode is falling our games recap talking about valve and steam and I just feel like the the kings are failing us

right now in our industry which is uh pretty sad yeah thanks everybody for watching our show thanks for listening to the podcast and being continued supporters of what we do we appreciate every single listener and you know I really hope for the better of the industry that the industry gets better all right talk to you later [Music]