A report now takes a look behind the scenes of the online shooter Fortnite. Anonymous employees report there of brutal overtime and intense pressure. The success of the game comes at a high price.
Where does the report come from? The US site Polygon has spoken with former and current employees of Epic and contractors. Polygon has also used statements from a spokesperson of Epic in its insider report.
This is the main problem: Employees say they often worked more than 70 hours a week. Some of them even more than 100 hours. A week only has 168 hours.
Quality assurance and customer service employees speak of a stressful and hostile work environment, where voluntary overtime was expected.
The success of Fortnite comes at a high price
Where does this come from? The problem is visible in the booming success of Fortnite. The company apparently was not prepared for it, but wanted to keep it going for as long as possible at any cost.
To maintain this success, Fortnite was supposed to be constantly updated with new modes, skins, and weapons. This meant that there was always a deadline and employees could not rest.
One employee says:
“The biggest problem is that we constantly have a patch. The bosses focus on keeping Fortnite as popular as possible – especially now that new competition is emerging.”
A spokesperson for Fortnite says: A representative of Epic tells Polygon that people work very hard on Fortnite. But extreme situations like a 100-hour week are incredibly rare and they try to avoid them happening regularly.
Everything must happen immediately
Where does the time pressure come from? Developers constantly have to react to things and change them. Everything has to happen immediately, nothing is left to the employees in terms of time, it is said.
If something breaks, like a weapon, you can’t just turn it off and fix it in the next patch. You have to repair the broken weapon immediately.
As soon as there are negative reactions to a patch, someone at the top says: “We have to change this.”
Then everyone is pulled from what they are currently doing and have to do overtime. This is great for players and the public, but it comes at a price.
A spokesperson says: Fortnite would have been much more successful than expected. Everyone at Epic reacted with incredible dedication and eagerness to this success. The team quickly expanded Fortnite to grow the audience.
That’s why hardly anyone can take time off: Furthermore, it is said that employees are offered time off, but this is hardly feasible in practice.
Because no one wants to be the one who takes vacation, as that means colleagues have to do their work.
There is a fitness room in the office that employees could use in their free time. But no one ever has free time because they are always in “crunch” time. They constantly need to develop more content and stuff, it is said.
Moreover, people feel that their job is at risk if they do not push through. It is said that they knew employees who refused to work on weekends. If a deadline was missed because their part of the task was not resolved, they were fired.
The worst affected would be contractors who are employed between 6 and 12 months. If they are not willing to work more than planned, their contracts will not be extended and new ones will be hired.
One of the supervisors is said to have said: “Just bring me more bodies!” This is how they view the contractors: as “bodies”.
Why doesn’t anyone complain? Attempts to complain to supervisors or the HR department are fruitless. Supervisors would shy away from such discussions. The direct supervisors have no answers but just shrug their shoulders.
Those who rebel often leave the company afterward.
Employees would swallow everything for months, then simply stand up and disappear. If you ask whether the employee will come back, you will just be looked at strangely.
That’s why the problem is so persistent: The obvious solution for Epic, which earns so much money, is hiring more people. But that has its limits.
The spokesperson says, they have constantly hired more people. The number of full-time employees at Epic has doubled since the launch of Fortnite. The problem is not money, but the speed at which new, highly qualified people can be found and onboarded:
- Therefore, they have collaborated with contractors and independent studios to better distribute the work.
- They have also changed the way of working so that multiple teams can work in parallel.
- They have also introduced bi-weekly mandatory breaks for everyone in winter and summer.
Are there any good news? Polygon also quotes a group of employees they spoke with who thoroughly enjoy working at Epic. They say:
- there’s good money
- an excellent bonus system
- you can advance in your career
- and some say they have never worked overtime personally, even though they work on Fortnite
“Voluntary Overtime”
It is said that Epic has sent out several memos stating that overtime is voluntary – but employees likely see this as “theoretical”.
Especially young employees believe they must work so much to get ahead, says one of the sources.
The report from Polygon ends with a statement from an employee:
“It’s killing people. Something has to change. I can’t imagine how we’re going to keep this up for another year. At first, it was okay because Fortnite was a huge success and felt good. We solved problems that were new for Epic: how to run a large, global game as an online game. But now the work is just endless.”
This is what it’s about: Similar reports have been read in recent years about massive overtime at Red Dead Redemption 2 and much pressure and production issues at Anthem.
The overtime culture in the video game industry is referred to as “crunch” culture and has apparently been a major problem for years.
