Isak Czervenatis / Edge columnist
Crunch culture is the practice of having people being required to work overtime during development stages in the video game industry. These overtime hours are often not small, and can can reach 100 hours weekly, often with no compensation for working extra hours as would be expected. This can lead to undereating (resulting in severe weight loss), fatigue, depression, anxiety, and even “stress casualties”, referring to people going into mental breakdowns. But why does crunch exist, and why do studios encourage it?
Why is crunch still around? Simple: because it’s legal, and it gets the job done. According to The Washington Post, overtime exemption laws apply to the average salary of game developers, meaning that they are not required to have paid overtime.
Crunch culture has been around for a while, but made large-scale public knowledge with the 2004 “EA Spouse Letter”, where a video game worker’s spouse wrote a blog post about how their significant other dealing with extremely large crunch, reaching 12 hours of work, six days a week, with unpaid overtime.
Most often, crunch happens because of last-minute changes to the game, so workers must fit more work into fewer hours to release a product by the intended release date. This is even more so when a game has a large, passionate fanbase or a “hype train” going on, as there is more pressure on the developers to get the game released by the time they said they would, to avoid anger from the community. This can lead to disastrous results, with one case being the buggy and broken mess of the release of Cyberpunk 2077 in late 2020. If crunch is so damaging to the developers of games as well as the games themselves, what can we do about it?
You can help with the situation by not buying games that are credibly known to have been created with worker exploitation, as well as openly speaking out against the studios pushing their workers to their limits. Make sure to take a stand against the crunch being pushed, and let your friends and followers know that the game was built on the backs of exploited workers, so we can hopefully get closer to stopping crunch culture.
Something that will help improve the crunch situation would be the creation of a video game industry union, like other industries such as construction or healthcare workers. A group by the name of “Game Workers Unite!” is helping in the framework of creating video game unions, which would help people out by getting worker’s rights in check.
Sources:
“Why is the games industry so burdened with crunch? It starts with labor laws.” By Michael Thomsen
“‘Crunch’ Is No Cheat Code for Better Video Games” By Adis Posko
“The Horrible World Of Video Game Crunch” By Jason Schreier
“Video Games Are Destroying the People Who Make Them” By Jason Schreier
“How BioWare’s Anthem Went Wrong” By Jason Schreier
“What Is Crunch Culture and How Does It Effect Video Game Studios?” By Umar Hassan
“Crunch Culture Can Destroy Development Teams” By Jenna Sargent