Gameloft accused of illegal, dangerous working conditions
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http://www.destructoid.com/gameloft-accused-of-illegal-dangerous-working-conditions-206334.phtml
First news of team bondi, now gameloft, is this a popular unspoken trend in the industry?.Mobile studio Gameloft has been accused of overworking staff to "dangerous" levels, with a former staff member leveling some incredibly huge allegations at the creator of such titles as Asphalt and N.O.V.A.
"Some weeks I was working 100 to 120 hours a week," said former New Zealand studio head Glenn Watson. "Starting at 9:30 AM, going home at 2:30 AM, and then coming back into the office at 8:30 AM to start work again was not unusual. There were other times when I would be called back into the office at 11:30 PM by the studio producer, only to head home again at 2:30 AM. It was after I worked four consecutive weeks of fourteen-hour days -- including weekends -- that I realised I needed to resign."
Watson and anonymous corroborators have stated that the French headquarters would often manufacture false deadlines to deliberately create panic and frenzied "crunch" periods. One junior programmer allegedly worked a 24-hour stint to meet these demands. It is said that Gameloft told anybody who refused to work their "contractual hours" that they were free to go, despite the working conditions violating New Zealand's healthy and safety laws.
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Fuck you, Gameloft, and anybody else that pulls these kinds of stunts.
Specifically: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1389942&postcount=107
If my boss call me at 11.30 pm, then, it's "fuck you, i rage quit". I'd rather like to wash dishes in some restaurant for a time.
I don't know who's the fucktard who invented that stressing managment thingy, but it's madness and totally counter productive.
A rush time to time, if you have compensations, is acceptable. But this is mental rape. Disgusting.
i mean, i did crunch only once for 2 or 3 days and i work for 2 years here.
in germany law goes over contract and if you get fired you can sue the shit out of them
Yeah mean this?
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/index.htm
Also, chaosengine is also a good forum to hang around to discover rotten facts about companies.
chaosengine is nice if your in, which I am not, I don't know anyone who gotten in, so I can't pester them about trying them to get me in yet.
edit: so as a public list for all new comers to see it fails a bit. also, glassdoor is nice, but its a very general website, listing not only video game studio's. so its really tough trying to find the company you are looking for.
I would like to see a website that would just list studios and allow epmloyees to anonymously list the amount of overtime they work so you could just look and see the average overtime. Nobody is really honest when you ask about crunch in an interview.
Sure they can host some great conferences and events, but they are pretty much powerless to effect change. Most companies pay their employees membership dues as part of their benefits. As a result almost all of IGDA's funds come from the very companies that break these labour laws.
I mean you think news like this and Team bondi would be front page discussions on IGDA.. but its all pretty much been ignored.. oh sure they want an "investigation" after the fact. But what does it say that disgruntled developers would first go to game news sites, rather than IGDA?
Unfortunately it seems to be highly under used. Which could be because it requires a work email to vote, which is probably monitored by the company itself... Not sure if there's really any way around that problem.
I can totally relate to that :P
Having worked in Germany, while it's better than in the US, you're incorrect to assert that labor laws are never broken, or that it's so black and white to pursue your legal rights when it happens. It takes money to go to court, and it's very easy as the holder of all power (one of the few employers in games in a large country full of numerous people wanting to work in that industry) to bend the law and get more than you pay for, in a way that would be very difficult to get in trouble for.
Now go to a country with even weaker labor laws and you get situations like this.
Anyone have any opinions on if I happened to get my first job at a studio like that, would you stay there just for experience and to get your name on a AAA title or would you run as fast as you can?
They just seemed so idealistic.
glad to hear it isnt bad at the montreal one. Its always hilarious when this kind of stuff is exposed and then the parent company acts all horrified and appalled when in most cases they were fully aware of the conditions and probably contributing directly to them. then they act all shocked and disgusted and distances themselves from that branch.
The best advice is try to get a job in a location where there are plenty of other studios, so you're not stuck at the only show in town in a bad situation. I wouldn't up and quit unless I had another job lined up already, unless it was really, really bad. But you always need to have a plan B in the games industry. Layoffs or poor working conditions are all too common.
Company A doesn't want B stealing good applicants so lleaves bad reviews
Company C is releasing a game in 6-8 months at a similar time frame of another similar game, leave a bad review and hope to stunt their workforce.
Perhaps I'm just seeing the bad possibilities, not sure if companies would do this or not tho.
right and you're going to take time to moderate this during crunch breaks right?
The way I look at it, the games industry and the movie industry are slowly becoming the same size, and talent hires flit between the two. Some blockbuster games make more money than blockbuster movies.
So what don't they have in common?
Unions.
The movie industry has very strong unions that can defend workers rights. If someone had the balls to do it in the movie and TV industries, why not games?
I was not aware that VFX had unions...
It could very well be that its just Gameloft in NZ that's run by M.Bison's, and the other Gameloft studios in north america are running fairly and smoothly.
Perhaps, but if the other studios recieve orders from the same people in France, the situation could be similar at those places as all.
Some polycounters have said that the Montreal studio has the same crap, polycounters who work there. Unreasonable deadlines from the France HQ, deadlines that end up being fake milestones...
I just read about this a couple of days ago and I too am one of the people that dodged the Gameloft Auckland bullet. I don't know much about the conditions there other than that people I know who worked there have left and weren't at all happy with the environment.
Just for a bit of perspective, the game development scene in Auckland is just starting out so the talent that got snapped up (and I guess the studio as a whole) were really trying to prove themselves as this is by far the biggest opportunity most New Zealanders have had.
I hate that this is a trend in the industry. Is there anything we can do about it?
The problem is that there'll always be people to fill the ranks of developers from somewhere as any kid with a PC in his bedroom can knock together a portfolio if not an entire game. And beyond him there'll always be a Chinese kid who'll do it for less pay.
That, as I understand it at least, is the problem with trying to unionise or start a digital artists guild or whatever. There's no real way for such a thing to gain any traction with so many folks who'd just be happy to have a job in games or film effects. To achieve anything I'd imagine there'd have to be some kind of mass uprising right across both industries and beyond that to eduational institutions and individuals - folks across the world downing styluses and saying "Right. No more work until we get this shit sorted". I can't imagine that such a thing could ever really feasibly occur.
I suppose a step forward at least would be to get together a group of developers who'll actually argue for the rights of workers. You know, what the IGDA is supposed to do. It's debatable whether they'd have much impact without the power to call strikes and whatnot behind them, but realistically it's probably all that can be done.
That's my perspective at least. Lord knows there are better people to speculate on this sort of thing than me.
Unions do a lot more than call strikes.
For example, the electrician's union, IBEW, has a market recovery fund. Every member of the union pays a small percentage of their wages into the fund.
The market recovery fund is used to help union contractors (companies that hire union employees) to bid on jobs. This allows the union contractors to compete with low-ball non-union companies.
A union of videogame artists could create a fund that would offer start-ups funding to create demos or full games. This would be conditional on hiring members of the union, of course.
Imagine you are a small start-up looking for workers and funding. You go to the union, apply for assistance from the fund, and get a head start on developing your game.
The union could also organize experienced artists who are unemployed to assist start-ups. A fund of knowledge that could be paired with a market recovery fund.
Another service a union could offer is an apprenticeship program. Currently, students are paying over $100, 000 for a two-year course. The union could organize its own training program for a fraction of that price and the money paid by students could contribute to the market recovery fund. The union could offer a five-year apprenticeship program where an apprentice would work most of the year and then go back to school for a few months until they became a journeyman.
If you were a student, would you rather pay $100,000 for a two-year course or $25,000 (a completely made up figure) for a five year apprenticeship program where you were working for ten months out of the year. The time spent working would keep you out of the crushing debt most students now have AND you would be getting real experience.
As an employer, would you rather hire somebody who sat in school for two years or someone who was tested in the workplace for five years?
Just a few ideas of what a union could offer artists and the videogame industry.
I think we just need more comprehensive labor laws which say that companies cannot add loop holes like "reasonable unpaid overtime" to their contracts
Or if there's a solution that's better than this simple tattletaling I keep reading on websites that'd be good, but who would push for a solution? I mean people working comfortably wouldn't want to change.
I never see any follow up stories either. Do they just get away with it? Continue doing it?
I don't know about the rest of the world but here in Ireland they have too much power, and quite often serve to keep unskilled idiots in their jobs.
I think Ged hit the nail on the head, strongly enforced labor laws would be better.
You'd need to provide proof of this, because the narrative that "unions entrench worthless people" is a lie propagated by business owners because it benefits their bottom line to have un-organized workers. Right now the Ikea in Danville Virginia forces their workers to watch videos weekly explaining the perils of unionizing, despite the fact the Swedish unionized Ikea workers make 2.5x as much money and have benefits and vacations. This is not an isolated incident. There are entire 3rd party companies a business can hire to brainwash their workers into believing unionizing is bad. Why is it that union-busting methods are never EVER undertaken by the workers of a company, but always the upper management and owners?
Seriously, every single industry with unions tries to paint the financial problems as the fault of the unions: Teachers, Car manufacturers, hollywood, etc. Yet all of them secure above average pay and benefits for their members, and if you become knowledgable in the actual financial problems of these industries, they are the fault of bad management (or in the teacher's case, bad government).
Organized workers are great. This "unions=bad" attitude is a false seed planted by years of propaganda from those who own the means of communication (which is, surprise! also rich people) I know I have far more in common with even the worst, most incompetent 3d artist I've ever sat next to, than I ever will with the management or producers or publishers of a company. And the only way we will ever get a more fair slice of the pie we make from scratch is by having negotiating power.
I don't expect it to happen, but unionizing would be a great thing for all of our job certainty, pay, and day-to-day environment.
I think this union dislike can be because of fear as well. Apparently some people think that the people reporting to unions will be "blacklisted" by other companies because of the fear of getting reported or sued.
I've never reported anything to the union but I think it's good that I have something to fall back on if I were to be treated unfairly.
I don't disagree with you about any of what you've said. I'me just sick to death of people exploiting their unionised jobs to cover up for their own incompetence. I realise this isn't the majority, I guess I'm a bit bitter. Irelands had a fair helping of incompetents recently.
From my understanding of Ireland, the financial problems are far more related to the government following neoliberal policies, deregulating everything, and allowing the finance industry to party. It doesn't surprise me at all that this same group of people to whom all the wealth has been entrenched will make it seem like the unionized workers are the problem, because that keeps their privileged heads off the pikes of all the poor people they've fucked with their financial trickery.
I think the government just needs to start doing a better job of handing out stiffer penalties for companies that are breaking labor laws.
Also very wary of unionizing a tech industry that is rapidly evolving. Your current job description now will likely be completely different in 8 years. I wouldn't want a union to hinder that evolution.
You have to remember that < 70% of people serving in Congress are Millionaires, and as such, they don't give two shits about the 99% of Americans who ARENT millionaires. They make money by taking it from lobbyists trying to push the agenda of Corporate America and the top richest 1%. What makes anyone here think that congress will EVER pass harsher labor laws? Doing so would be completely detrimental to the profit margins of the people who legally bribe congress to make laws that benefit their cause.
Fuck... now i'm depressed.