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Programmer Sues VU Games Over Excessive Work Hours
eToychest writes "According to Reuters, a video game programmer has sued Vivendi Universal Games, claiming he and his colleagues were regularly forced to work extra hours and denied overtime pay. The suit, filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, is one of many filed against companies in the state in recent months, as employees seek to be classified as overtime-eligible to obtain compensation for working more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week. The suit seeks payment of back overtime wages plus other damages. This comes the recent announcement that the company said it would cut more than one-third of its staff, excluding Blizzard. Of the things mentioned in the suit, the complaints include no overtime compensation, and employees being ordered to falsify timesheets to indicate they worked shorter days." This report is especially interesting in light of the recent IGDA 'Quality Of Life' survey for game developers.
Wholly unregulated capitalism combined with high unemployment rates! The best way evar to disenfranchise the worker.
pooptruck
Are you kidding? If the option is "work overtime or lose your job", how many people are going to quit? How many are in a financial position to do so?
Don't forget too, that we're in a recovery period in the US economy right now, and a lot of these violations occurred during the recent past where jobs - and especially game programming jobs! - were very hard to come by.
Would you quit your job with no other job prospects and little or no savings just because you didn't want to work some overtime?
Employers have much more power than you apparently think.
Many times when this occurs the employees in question are salaried employees. People who make a flat monthly rate are a bit harder to pay overtime for than your standard hourly employee. Also you will find that places will usually explain to those people that they may be required to work extra hours and perform overtime and this is usually seen in their pay.
Something I would really like to know is if any employers actually pay their salaried workers a bit more knowing they will have to work overtime or if they manage ways to pay overtime or give them extra time off for working the overtime. While quitting may not always be an option as finding a replacement job is not always easy, it is still available as a way to get out of these types of bad situations.
In reality it may come down to forcing states to once again rework labor laws. Since in almost every state salaried workers are exempt from overtime pay they can become slave labor and while some companies may seemingly be able to get away with this, it isn't good for the people they have working for them. While removing the exemption may cost some companies more money, the smart ones will simple hire more workers to lower the overtime load since that would be cheaper than paying someone to work 60+ hours a week every week.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Success stories like Sierra or iD or Lord British are yesterday's news. Today the money is earned by the programmer and taken by the publisher. Maybe the music industry would be a smarter comparison than the movie industry. Business is able to take the lion's share from the talent once again because a good product is nothing without advertising and distribution.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Of course he can quit. That isn't the point of the article. The point is that the managers of the company were forcing non-exempt employees to work more time than they reported. It's ILLEGAL. Furthermore, IANAL, but I bet it qualifies as tax fraud as well.
Now, if these programmers were salaried, exempt, employees, the managers would be in a better position. But this wasn't the case.
The simple fact of the matter is that labor laws require employers to pay overtime to non-exempt employees. If the employee is right and managers were 'tweaking' the hours, it's illegal, and give the guy filing the suit credit, he had the balls to point it out.
Of course they fail to point out the other side of the matter, which is that maybe the managers were doing this because they were being squeezed by the higher ups who were putting pressure on them to farm the work out to India or something. I guess time will tell.
I worked at a pizza place while going to college. The managers there regularly worked 60 hour weeks for their salary. 9 hours to manage the business plus about 2-3 hours afterwards to handle closing and settling up the paperwork and bills for the night then dropping the cash off at the bank.
Salaried employees aren't paid x dollars for y time of work. They're paid x dollars to do a JOB.
I worked in the game industry too. Yeah, it was a sweatshop at times. It was also a LOT of fun. The sweatshop attitude wasn't entirely management's fault. They wanted a game in 12 months. We wanted a GREAT game and would regularly spend the extra time coding and experimenting to get the best result. Then, of course, we'd slip and management would hold us to our time. Then we'd get pissed at management and management would get pissed at us and the death march would begin.
The point is that it's not all "evil" management's fault. (Sometimes it is, but not always). But ultimately, the choice to work 80 hour work weeks lies with the individual, not the company.
The problem is, how often do you take time off to play a round of golf? If the company's doing their job viciously, never. Game companies especially, are not kind in the hours dept. They're typically understaffed and over worked. Once a game ships, you might get a week, or perhaps a month, off. Or you might complete Myst 3 and find yourself fired because your bosses aren't competent enough to keep the work coming in at a regular pace.
Basically, employers too often want to work a salaried employee like an hourly without the hassle of overtime.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
**
Salaried, nonexempt employees are not paid for their hours, they're paid to get a job done, regardless of the time it takes. That can mean working extra hours in the crunch time, or taking off a couple hours early on Friday to play golf.
**
That's all nice and good. IF the job is even possible to do in the timeframe, which means that you'd be doing extra hours for the crunch time that would last all year long from year to year.
of course, this might shed some light into some issues why some games are done so stupidly(a multi million game that's just bad because some few little things are done so badly).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The way I see it. You can complain, win your court case, lose your job, ask people if they'd like fries with that.
or
You can work your long hours and take every ounce of free time for yourself during the day, just making sure to do a bit of a better job than everyone else.
Another possibility is to band together with other IT workers, domestic as well as international, and demand fair pay for a day's work.
A unified group voice is the only counter to the dollars that management has at their disposal to throw around at election time. For me, I prefer to not be a sheep.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
And I somewhat disagree with your statement.
No one gets in the game industry to make great cash on an 'easy' job. Those that try usually quit when they realize how hard it is. And more money can generally be made doing other programming work, at least before mass outsourcing of such non-game work became common.
So yes, Game programmers typically make games because they want to, first and foremost.
Now, some people are workaholics, and would do the 80 hour thing, or near to it, by choice. But not everyone. Scheduling is pushed by the publishers, and management agree to it, and the programmers have to deal with it.
If a game company schedules a project assuming all staff will want to work 14 hour days for 3 and 4 month stretches, the game will suck.
Now, if a project starts to go bad and you start to have to work a death march that the employees were not told to expect at the outset, then the employer has breached the agreement. Salary is not a commission. Salary is "Perform Task X over time Y for amount of Cash Z". If they change the nature of X or Y, then Z should also change.
My boss compensates for overtime. Lord knows we have to work it, but it is ultimately compensated. Perhaps your company just is not as good as mine?
END COMMUNICATION
>That can mean working extra hours in the crunch time, or taking off a couple hours early on Friday to play golf.
If you are doing the later, I'm sure that someone higher up would love to know about this. Either they would like to give you more work or they don't need you at all.
>Do these people really WANT to be hourly employees?
Because it enforces equal work for equal pay.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Imagine this attitude in a factory. You are charged with screwing X into Y and half way down your shift something somewhere breaks and the entire line grinds to a hault. Well obviously lost production, what happens then in america or according to these posters? You don't get paid? You have to work unpaid overtime to make up for the lost time?
All I can say is thank god for unions in europe then, real unions.
There are basically 3 kinds of jobs
It is up to the boss to ensure in all cases that the person they employ actually performs as desired during the working hours but if there is simply to much work for the number of hours then this is not the problem of the employee in the first two salary situations.
Of course now the questions is where these programmers belong. Are they no different from a person working the assembly line or are they a director level employee.
Funny thing is that despite huge differences in working attitude around the world it seems impossible to say wich way is the right way. Japan was at one time a leader and look at them now. America had the assembly line and the highly paid worker with a car and freestanding house but recent news stories suggest america is no longer able to keep that up either.
Europe is to fragmented to make any real conslusions. My own country holland is amazingly well balanced with work in every field from farming to high tech stuff so we tend to feel fluctuations less then say detroit in the US when the car market shifted (we lost daf cars and it was news but it means a few thousand job losses not an entire city going down the shitter).
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
There's a checklist on conditions that you have to meet to be exempt (which I don't remember all of off the top of my head), but the gist of it boils down to this: you can't be exempt unless you have control.
To be exempt you really have to be a manager (supervise other people) or have near-complete control over how and when you do your job. It is very difficult to *compell* overtime from an exempt employee--it may end up being necessary logistically to get the job done, but that is employee's decision, *not* the employer's. Special circumstances can over-ride this, of course, but if there are "special circumstances" a good percentage of the time, then those circumstances aren't really very special anymore, and the job has probably been mis-classified.
He decided to just watch the government, and kind of scale it down to size, and run his life that way. --Laurie Anderson
It sounds nice but in reality there are very few workplaces where the flexibilty goes both ways.
You should try suggesting that if you stayed late that the next day you will be in late. Most bosses don't even seem to get the concept. I did work at one place that was fun and had amazingly long hours (so long I even just stayed overnight rather then spend more time travelling home then sleeping) but after a while I realized that while I had more money coming in I had far far more going out (pizza, late night shopping, etc) then doing regular 40hr work.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Absolutely it is tax fraud. Payroll tax fraud. They didn't pay FICA or FIT on any of those unreported wages, and that'd be at least 30% of the gross value of the wages. That's one reason the government tends to come down very heavy on these kinds of things--it's costing them serious money.
Don't ever mess with payroll taxes, by the way. As a company, you can get away with not paying your bills, or not paying your employees, or even not paying the bank. But if you ever miss paying your payroll tax deposit, they will throw you under the jail.
He decided to just watch the government, and kind of scale it down to size, and run his life that way. --Laurie Anderson
At my last job, I was a salaried exempt employee. That's what they told me. I didn't get paid for overtime. Fair enough, I'm on a salary. What pissed me off was that if I worked less than 8 hours, my pay was reduced accordingly, as if I was paid an hourly wage. They wanted it both ways.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I've read forums about things like this before, where companies pressure employees to falsify timesheets.
;)
Often, the response from many is "so what, most if not all companies do that" or something similar.
I just wanted to say that the company I currently work for as a programmer started using timesheets, and from day one to now, at all levels, with no exceptions (and I work over 50 hours a week on a regular basis, sometimes over 60) it has always been clearly stated:
"Do NOT falsify your timesheets. If you worked 80 hours last week, write it down. If we don't track time accurately, we don't know if you're all being overworked, and we won't realize we need to hire more people. So BE ACCURATE and don't hide the fact that you're working longer hours."
It should be no surprise, then, to learn that we not only survived the dot-bomb years, but we're growing so fast worldwide we can't find enough qualified people to fill the openings we're creating every day, even though we're hiring a LOT of people.
There's a lesson in there somewhere.
I've worked for a bunch of game companies including Origin, Ion Storm, and elsewhere. And I'm here to tell you, they are _not_ fun: they are the equivalent of 19th century sweatshops. Most places I worked, myself and other programmers routinely turned in 80-100 work weeks -- not because we were excited or invested in our job, but because we were told point blank that we would be fired otherwise. There is practically _no_ compensation. Most managers sneer at the idea of comp days, and the number of folks who've received bonuses or royalties that equalled the amount of time they put into a project is pretty minimal.
Managers, of course, come and go as they please and don't seem to understand why everyone is so unhappy with the situation. Because, well, isn't this a fun place to work? Don't they buy you dinner when you stay late and take you to see that "Star Wars" film? And hey, you get to have action figures on your desk! The fact that your hourly pay works out to be less than the guys in QA is never mentioned.
And to that guy who thinks that this is just the price you pay in order to take off on Friday and "play golf," you're obviously misinformed. No one gets to say "Hey, I'm done for the day, how about a round of frisbee?"; if you don't have work to do, you're instructed to find work to do.
If the joy of making computer games allows you to overlook these issues, then honestly, more power to you. But to act like this guy is somehow biting the hand that feeds him is simply uninformed and ludicrous. I have no idea how the legal rulings will play out, but I wish him all the best. Maybe if one of these companies gets scared, then the rest will preemptively adapt normal business practices (like just about everywhere else), act like grown-ups, and then they really might be fun places to work.
--
Lewis
This story possibly has reprecussions for the entire IT industry. Just because it concerns a game company down't mean it should be restricted to the games section.
There are plenty of programmers who have been forced to pull an all nighter while the boss goes home to count his stock options.
May the Maths Be with you!
After a month or so of this, we started talking to the labour board, and guess what, doesn't matter if we're salaried, we are eligible for overtime for every hour past 40 in a week that we work. Considering that last month I had been averaging about 70 hours a week (not at my own choice), I ended up taking home a lot more than I usually did, and suddenly, they weren't pushing us to work overtime so much. Might have had something to do with the fact that they probably blew their salary budget for the next few months. Also interesting is the fact that in our labour code, you cannot force and employee to work more than 4 hours per week unless it is an unforseen emergency. I don't think an approaching, or past deadline would qualify.
In case your wondering, they did try and designate us as professional employees, and thus get away from paying overtime. However, there are precious few positions/professions that qualify. Programmer, Network/Systems Analsyt, etc. do not qualify.
I wish you were correct. I really do.
The bad thing about not paying your payroll taxes is this: You're keeping your business running by stealing from your employees. As a business owner, the employee contribution to payroll taxes (known as the "trust fund" portion of the taxes) ISN'T YOUR MONEY! It's money that's been earned by your employees but that they let you hold onto because you've promised to send it in to the government on their behalf. (See? That's why it's called "trust fund" money; your employees trust you to send *their* money to the govt.)
If you don't pay your payroll taxes, you're a thief. Plain and simple.
If you ever hear that your employer is in trouble to non-payment of payroll taxes, look for another job immediately. Your destiny in your current position is too highly influenced by a lying crook.
Now, as for your "under the jail" comment - it's just not true. Employers can get pretty darn delinquent on payroll taxes before the IRS notices. When they do notice, you can drag out the collection process to a ridiculous degree thanks to the neutering the agency got as a result of all that bogus testimony to Congress back in 1998. The resulting statute, RRA98, provides so many mandatory administrative reviews and expanded taxpayer rights (rights to throw a monkey wrench into the machinery of legitimate tax collection, that is) that a smart lawyer can buy you ages before the government comes and shuts you down.
It happens eventually, but that "throw you under the jail" comment is a tad overstated.
Pity, that.
I'm a non-exempt professional in a usually-exempt profession (CPA). Just being professional is not enough. It's one of the indicators that there's a *good chance* that you are exempt, but you still have to meet the other criteria. But companies get nailed for this all the time by making assumptions. Every place I've worked has been nailed on this. (But always before I was there.)
It's always been a benefit for me, because they've then had to be extra careful with how they treat their employees. When I've been exempt, I've had true autonomy to control my work hours and location. And when I've been non-exempt (like now) I've gotten compensated for the overtime I've worked.
He decided to just watch the government, and kind of scale it down to size, and run his life that way. --Laurie Anderson
Try to explain (especially to an HR person) during an interview why you haven't been working for a year.
At 9 out of 10 interviews, "Because the economy is shitty and I didn't want to work in sweatshop-like conditions." isn't going to cut it. They'll smile, nod, figure there's something wrong with you that you're not admitting, and quietly circular-file your resume.
That's a national rate. In the last couple years, some states have had rates as high as 8.5%, and that's only counting the people who applied for unemployment benefits. Add in the homeless and people who just decided to live off their savings for a while, and I imagine you'd probably break that double-digits barrier. Not sure what this has to do with the story, though. All too often, these days, employers are trying to cut costs by hiring fewer people to do more work, and not compensating them for the extra time. I think a win in this case would be a great breakthrough for the software industry, where such situations are almost a way of life.
I know I'm not the only programmer out there that isn't a total slave. :)
The normal routine where I work is about 50 hours a week for a non manager programmer. Sometimes less, sometimes more. Mostly not on the more side. I believe we are fairly compensated for our time too.
Of course everyone is assigned in a group and thus stuck supporting a small range of apps and new development. Maybe this helps but it also limits your future opportunities.
Overall I'm betting lots of programmers aren't getting the raw deal we see here. And trust me, I'm enough of a devotee to my off time that when it gets back to 60 hour weeks, I'll be looking for a new job.
Be well,
Tojosan
Your comparison between the movie industry and the video game industry was a valid one, just not in the way you were going with it.
Movies have several levels of people involved with getting one made and distributed...and so do video games, now that it's a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Games, like movies, have actors, directors, producers, sound engineers, etc...but instead of the programmers being the stars, they're actually more akin to the lighting department, the set designers, the wardrobe consultants, grips and cameramen. They are just as important in the making of the game, but ultimately will have their work overlooked by the majority of the viewing public. John Q. Gamer probably won't care one way or another if Steven H. Programmer worked on this title or that title...only the fan-boys and hardcore gamers care about things like that.
The stars of the games are no longer even the games themselves, or the characters...more and more the stars are people whose agents advised them that they ought to capitalize on the resounding success of the game industry...Vin Diesel, Jet Li, entire casts from movies providing the voice work and mo-cap for their digitized counterpart.
Is this fair to the programmers? Should they be relegated to a supporting role? Well, movie studios and media conglomerates are snatching up publishing studios like they're friggin' Pokemon...gotta catch 'em all...so this is just the way things are working out in the industry, fair or not. It doesn't surprise me in the least that this happened at VU...they're making games the way they make movies. The only hope for programmers to continue to be able to get the respect and compensation that they deserve is by unionizing...and that may be around the corner if things keep moving in the direction they've been headed in for the past couple of years.
For good or for ill, video games grew up...and while we may not have any more Sierras or iDs or Origins...we're getting slick, stylized, polished games the likes of which we could've only dreamed of back in the day.
Back to the topic...getting jerked around on your pay is pretty crap...but this Pandora's Box could have all kinds of consequences that the plaintiff(s) hadn't anticipated...like not having to worry about finding programming work anymore, since it will have all been shipped out in the name of financial stability.
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)