One of them is said to have worked almost 96 hours in one week.
Netmarble already reacted in 2018 (via MMOCulture):
- A core working time from 10:00 to 16:00 was established.
- Employees were not allowed to be in the office longer between 22:00 and 8:00 unless a special request was made.
- Pregnant women may work a maximum of 30 hours.
Now, the direct competitor NCSoft is following suit with its model of automatic access locks. However, it is not known whether these systems will actually prevent crunch or if it can be circumvented with special permissions.
Crunch has been a topic in gaming not just since Cyberpunk 2077. In Korea, there have already been cases where employees have worked themselves to death. The MMO company NCSoft will henceforth exclude employees who work too many hours per month.
What is happening at the company? NCSoft is known for MMORPGs like Lineage, Blade and Soul and is currently working on Project TL, which is set to release in 2021. The Korean company wants to take stronger action against excessive overtime, as MMOCulture reports.
A new “Gate Off” system is to be tested, which automatically locks employee access when they have worked more than 208 hours in a month. This equates to an average of about a 52-hour work week.
Although according to MMOCulture many employees at NCSoft are also working from home due to COVID-19, the company is already testing the new program and collecting feedback from employees. It is therefore possible that the exact hour count will be adjusted later based on this feedback.
Crunch has already led to deaths in Korea
Why is such a cap being introduced? Overtime is not uncommon, especially in the final phase of a game:
- In Halo 2, Crunch nearly ruined Bungie
- In Anthem, an insider report painted a bleak picture. Development reportedly began late, and to compensate, there were many overtime hours.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 was supposedly developed in just 9 months. However, a lot went wrong during the process.
- The developers of Cyberpunk 2077 promised no crunch beforehand, but had to break that promise. Nevertheless, a product was released that had numerous bugs, especially in the versions for current consoles.
However, the so-called crunch is not just about “a few overtime hours” but a kind of permanent state. Journalist Jason Schreier also criticized this in connection with Cyberpunk.
According to Schreier, group pressure is the norm, so everyone works longer hours constantly. This would destroy marriages and drive people into burnout. One only needs to see how many developers flee from the video game industry to realize what this culture does.
What is the situation with crunch in Germany? There are also several gaming companies here that are accused of crunch. Our colleagues from GameStar have spoken to developers. It was even said that crunch is already being normalized at the university.
What consequences can this have? As early as 2017, we reported on Netmarble Neo, the studio that implemented Lineage 2 Revolution. Three employees there are said to have died from causes related to overwork.
One of them is said to have worked almost 96 hours in one week.
Netmarble already reacted in 2018 (via MMOCulture):
- A core working time from 10:00 to 16:00 was established.
- Employees were not allowed to be in the office longer between 22:00 and 8:00 unless a special request was made.
- Pregnant women may work a maximum of 30 hours.
Now, the direct competitor NCSoft is following suit with its model of automatic access locks. However, it is not known whether these systems will actually prevent crunch or if it can be circumvented with special permissions.
