A report denounces the crunch in the developer responsible for the LEGO Games
A report has reported on the culture of the Crunch present at TT Games, the developer behind the official Games of Lego.
The article, published by Polygon, details the frustrations suffered by employees during the creation of Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga – that finally has a launch date, after many delays.
More than 20 TT Games employees described working conditions, with bosses that expected their employees to do extra excessive and often unpaid crunch – as part of the organization of projects, from the study’s own Foundation in 2005.
In a principio, these extra hours were going to be voluntary and paid, but as of 2010, a system was established by which they could not extend those hours for money or free days. Many of the employees denounce having been pressured to make Crunch, as a blackmail, but with very good words.
Many of the developers noted that the weeks between 80 and 100 hours were normal during the stages of Crunch.
Specifically, it was the testing teams that took the worst part, especially after a tester accidentally filtered an image of a Wii U command before the launch of the console. Since then, the Testing team members needed to obtain permission to visit the other areas of the building.
TT Games also seems to suffer from a remarkable salary difference between men and women.
LEGO STAR WARS: The Skywalker Saga now takes five years in development, and employees assure that it began to be created in a new and full of bugs, instead of using unreal, as had been done until then. The state of the engine and the added constant and erasing functionalities caused the development to be complicated, while the bosses pressed the employees to obtain a metacritic score from at least 85.
Around 40 employees have left the study in the last 10 months, 10% of its total size of 400 employees.
The report also points out that there have been some improvements recently. After the various conflicts in the development of Skywalker Saga, more vacation time was offered to senior employees. Even so, many have left in recent months.