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EA Faced With Another Employee Lawsuit
GamesIndustry.biz has the news that EA has been slapped with another employee-filed lawsuit. He's part of the engineering staff, and feels unfairly targeted by the "creative staff" laws in CA. From the article: "...in the midst of a storm of unwanted publicity about EA's employment practices, and provoked a response from the firm's vice president of human resources, Rusty Reuff, who admitted that 'as much as I don't like what's been said about our company and our industry, I recognize that at the heart of the matter is a core truth.'"
Anyways EA has 4400 employees worldwide, so I'm not suprised they have disputes every now an then.
they'd have realized by now that forcing the employees to work such long hours is part of the reason that their games are all complete crap.
Face it. After someone's been awake for more than 24 hours straight, their reaction time and mental abilities are worse off than if they had a 1.1 blood-alcohol content.
Force your employees where their sleep debt over the course of a week is above 24 hours, and imagine what you've got.
EA should take the hint. The gamers are getting tired of crappy games, the programmers can't program like that. Cut the crap on the programmers, let them get some decent rest, and your games will turn out better because they won't spend 90% of their time fixing all the bugs that were created because people were too fucking tired to code correctly.
The saddest part is that EA games is a publisher, not even the development powerhouse it used to be. It makes literally ONLY EA-sports games. 9 out of 10 of the other games are acquired via merger or buy outs.
For a company that has 5000 employees and engineer only 5 sports title a year, basketball football hockey baseball nascar. All EA does is hire $400,000 salary lawyers to slap EA logos on other company's work.
There simply needs to be a point when people will stop accepting what has been going on in this industry.
Just because it seems that crunch sessions are always some part of a development cycle does not mean that it should be accepted. If anything, the continuous nature of it should lead to methods of prevention, such as allowing for a longer development time.
I work at EA and can (anonymously, at least) vouch for claims like this. After the first wave of lawsuits and the EASpouse publicity, EA immediately set out with an attempted rectification of thier employment practices by distributing an employee satisfaction survey and openly claiming about thier search for ways to reward hard working employees.
I can't say they aren't actually trying to end this negative situation, but it's obvious from our point of view that they're attempts are fueled by the desire to quell the bad press and save face, as opposed to actually compensating overworked employees and resolving the issues.
Obviously the company sees the issue differently than the press and public, and is trying to rectify issues for the wrong reasons. (i.e. Cure bad press, not employee hardship). I believe they will only put forth the effort enough to stop thier people from complaining publicly, before returning to the tyrancy and money-mongering.
One of the biggest problems in the software industry, speaking as someone who's been here for a modest amount of time (6 years, since my sophomore year of college, full-time), is that management sets unrealistic timelines. If more upstream design was done (sorry, reading Code Complete for the 2nd time) then they could develop more realistic schedules. Enough with the 90% floating requirements, enough late-schedule additions. Engineer for quality from inception, and they could come out with better games on realistic schedules with happy, healthy employees who will be a value added in the sheer amount of innovation they can bring to the table when all aspects of their lives are balanced (for some, this is an impossibility, and businesses take advantage of this neurotic behavior, which I think is unethical).
...this is really something that is ripe for legistation to deal with esspecially because its legistation that has caused the problem in the first place. The only reason this stuff has come up is because laws exist that allow EA and other companies to deny overtime.
I have not seen overtime where I work since the bubble burst. Before that they did give it to me and others who by law they didn't have to; however they had exemptions in out company policy (which still exist) which allowed for overtime on critical approved projects. Since the bubble burst those exemptions never get invoked. Its really to bad because pervious to the change I would regualrly work 55 hour weeks (I unfortunately couldn't collect overtime until 50 hours because of my pay status) Now I go home at 40 since on my pay scale thats the minum number of hours.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
"Aren't engineers usually salaried workers anyways?"
/yr.
yeah, so picture this scenario: You're interviewing for the job position. They want to hire you and you negotiate your salary. Let's say you're used to making $35/hr. You do the math, and figure that 40hr/wk x $35 = $1400. Boils down to about $72,800
You figure that based on your experience, you may deserve more than that, but the living expenses aren't as high as at your old job, and you really want in on the games industry (and besides, the company is refusing to pay more than that). OK sounds good. You take the job.
Then reality hits. You find yourself working 60hr weeks consistently. Or 80hr weeks as some have claimed. You're now essentially being paid $17.50 an hour!! That's what a JR programmer might get. But you're not a JR programmer. You're an experienced SR.
So, looking back: If at the interview and salary negotiation stage of this scenario, you were offered $17.50/hr with the opportunity to work 80hrs/week (so that it works out to $72,800 a yr) would you have accepted the job???
Best quote from the article:
Their case argues that EA's engineers "do not perform work that is original or creative,"
EA games have no orignality or creativity? Say it ain't so!
...for being greedy immoral bastards, that's business. its OUR fault because we're the spineless consumers who keep buying their shit while bitching about it over and over and over. either get some balls and don't buy the 'latest & greatest' copy of last years garbage regurgitated or stop complaining that they put out shit all the time. you're feeding the system and they have NO REASON TO CHANGE. personally i don't buy any sports title whatsoever, and also avoid EA games like the plague, until either A) i can buy a dirt cheap import version of it, or B) buy it in the bargain bin a few months later. i'll pay top dollar for intelligent games/designs, but anythign these guys put out will have to go through by A/B filter above first.
sigs suck
If you read the article, you can see that the law they are trying to dispute is only applied to programmers who make $41 an hour or more. If you add that up, it means these programmers make at least $91,840 a year.
Now if you are a programmer, (I am) I'm sure you work some overtime during crunch time. Do you get overtime for it? I know I don't, it's expected that I work until the job is done. Do you make $91,840? I don't think too many programmers are making 91k nowadays.
We haven't yet cracked the code on how to fully minimize the crunches in the development and production process.
- From TFA
Maybe, just maybe, you should consider setting more realistic goals? Granted, they want to hit the market during the holiday rush, but then, add more programmers.
It sounds like EA is just trying to exist as a programming sweat shop, keep the minimum number of programmers to do the job, and push them to work ridiculous hours to make a deadline. While I don't want to see a law to stop this, I'd at least like to see a few good lawsuits take a ton of money from EA on this. Perhaps, fine them an amount equivilent to the net profit made from all the games which suffered from this sort of behavior, and divide it up between the people who worked under these conditions.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
But when a new verson of Madden Football comes out, most gamers with jobs end up going more than 24 hours without sleep, too. Seems to me that all QA should be done by sleep-depraved zombies, to simulate real-world conditions.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Any relation to Rooby Roo?
er...
g/depraved/s//deprived/
Then again, I guess it's sort of funny both ways.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
>their reaction time and mental abilities are worse off than if they had a 1.1 blood-alcohol content.
.40 BAC.
I disagree.
Most people are comatose / dead when they have anything near a
Respect It.
If you need to hire someone that won't be a crybaby when you make them work long hours for tons of money, hire me. Programming 100+ hours a week for good money is infinitely better than unemployment.
I'll be waiting for your call.
Thanks,
DoktorSeven
This is a sig. Deal with it.
Not that I'm unsympathetic to his cause (*wave the EA-is-Evil flag*), but the link seems to say that the reason he's not getting this overtime is because he's classified as a "creative employee" by the law. Programmers are easily just as much a 'creative employee' as the artists, in my opinion. As such, it is the law which is stupid and ought to be criticized.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Rather than replying to like 10 different posts shortly enough, I'll just write what I have to write pre-emptively.. ;)
There have been so many misconceptions flying around about all this for a few months now, that's it has gotten ridiculous. The things I wished people understood are:
a) This is NOT a problem specific to EA. It is a problem with many -- if not MOST -- game developers (in the U.S., especially). Game studios all over are plagued with these problems that everyone's been talking about. The IGDA has had a "Quality of Life" group for a while now, trying to work on these issues. So why does EA get mentioned the most? Simple, it's for the same reason that MS gets slammed the hardest when people talk about OS issues or software engineering hours, etc. etc... -- They're the biggest. By default, the biggest will always bear the brunt of the attack. The only reason this is an issue at all is BECAUSE it's pandemic of the game industry as a WHOLE.
2) These things aren't even true within all of EA! EA is a large company, and while there are some groups that have these problems, it's hardly all of them! That's just yet another misconception people have.
Personally, I am bothered by these issues, but because they are big problems facing the game industry as a whole, not just one company.
Well Duke Nukem Forever should be awsome considering they have been getting some serious rest.
>their reaction time and mental abilities are worse off than if they had a 1.1 blood-alcohol content.
.40 BAC.
I disagree.
Most people are comatose / dead when they have anything near a
Given some of the mistakes I've seen severly sleep-deprived people (in college) make, I would say in some cases it would be have been better for them to be unconsious or temporarily comatose.
they'd have realized by now that forcing the employees to work such long hours is part of the reason that their games are all complete crap.
Well, sales figures say otherwise, and that's what's important to them.
"Their case argues that EA's engineers "do not perform work that is original or creative," that they do not have management responsibilities and are seldom allowed to use their own judgement, according to extracts published by SiliconValley.com." I'd like to see EA try to prove in court that it does original or creative work.
The Sims, the best-selling game ever, is "complete crap"?
Sorry about that, my finger slipped and I didn't catch it before posting.
.11, not 1.1.
That should have read
Thanks.
[typical OSS advocate retard] if they just made their software opensource they wouldnt need to pay programmers anyways... [/typical OSS advocate retard] /rolleyes
The whole industry needs an overhaul, and quick.
Since this has turned into a complain-fest, it's my turn. I know programmers have it bad, but what about the QA department? I work at a company (see below) that does not pay its QA Leads OT. This wouldn't be that big a deal if we got paid a descent salary to start with or maybe had some perks. During Crunch-time last year, I worked 25 days in a row (12-hour days, mind you) and didn't get so much as a "thank you", much less proper compensation. It got to the point that my testers where making more than me a week.
At least at EA, they have such perks as a free employee gym, free meals if you have to work OT, employee soccer/basketball fields, etc. At THQ (supposedly the second biggest publisher), we don't even have a freaking game/break room to relax in. It boggles my mind that a company that makes 600 million dollars a year can't afford to pay OT to those who deserve it. I'm not a greedy guy, but pay us what we are owed, before you are forced to.
Ahhh, I feel a bit better now that I got to vent.
the rest of them are all the kind of stuff EA does - boring, same old same old creations.
I don't give a shit about Madden now being the only "official" NFL game, if they can come back and actually make it worth playing, maybe I'll buy the next one. If not, I'll happily go right back to playing Tecmo Bowl.
Face it. EA does two things: rushed-out crappy mission packs/expansions, and rushed-out crappy football games that are exactly the same crappy gameplay as last year's but with the new year's roster and 10% more polygons on the fucking shoelaces.
Even the Lord of the Rings games were rushed, and suffered accordingly.
#1 - Medal of Honor: The Same Game, Over And Fucking Over Again. After the first one, it's a bunch of fucking mission packs. See my previous complaint about EA.
Not done by EA either, done by various studios and the EA logo slapped on the side of the box.
#2 - Command & Conquer: a series that steadily went downhill, as Westwood just died.
#3 - SSX... sssnnnoooozzzeeee
#4 - FIFA: see NFL For Europe. Same Shit, Different Year.
#5 - Need for Speed: driving games ceased to amuse me after Pole Position II. I'd much rather have a game that's FUN, thank you.
#6 - Burnout. SEE Need for Speed.
#7 - Battlefield 1942: AGAIN, not done by EA, just had the EA logo slapped on it. And the best thing it has going for it is that it is customizable, so there are crews who are taking it and redoing it with more fun scenarios like Star Wars and Battletech.
Highly acclaimed by magazines that were paid to highly acclaim them, doesn't mean they interest me. Sorry.
As far as Two Towers and RotK, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt that it was the rush to meet movie deadline, and not just EA, that caused them to be mediocre-at-best rushed titles.
Sorry, but EA is boring. That's my position, and I'm sticking to it.
Come on now, the best one they've got now is Oddworld, and that only because some marketroid at Microsoft doesn't know his head from his ass and let the publishing rights slip away.
I'll bite. Why the fuck does The Sims require that you run as Administrator in Windows?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
It[']s really to bad because pervious to the change I would regualrly work 55 hour weeks
If this is yuor atenshion too detale when back down to fourty huors, mayb 55 was a mistaik?
Not normally one for being a spelling/grammar Nazi but it has validity in the midst of a discussion about how long hours effect accuracy.
You couldn't link to a torrent for the Xbox ISO or something?? :P
The only game EA has released that I have enjoyed since Battlefield 1942 is Burnout 3. The Sega ESPN games are way better sports games.
No sig for you!!
Yeah, clearly gamers are tired of EA's games. That explains why it sells more games than any games company in the world.
Um, a doctor?
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
Stop idolizing Penny Arcade.
Games and Movies aren't the same. Games stay on the store shelves for a LONG TIME. Movies stay in theatres for a SHORT TIME. That's the difference. So what if all the good games come out in the same month? No one is forcing you to buy them all at once. Show some restraint. You'll even save some cash in the long run by purchasing some of the games later in their life-cycle...
Troll.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
My question is why the hell it's so popular. I really don't understand it.
I admit, i was hooked for about a week. I haven't touched any of them since.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
LOL. A resident, at least... :)
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'd have mod you up had I had the points, instead I find myself replying. Given that many (if not most) of business in the world are looking towards America for leadership, it'll be interesting to see where this is heading. Europe may perhaps be behind in productivity due to socialist labor protection, but the US is arguably too far on the other end of the spectrum.
(I already replied to that, see Comment #11754365)
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
I think quotes such as this gives you a more complete picture as well:
Their case argues that EA's engineers "do not perform work that is original or creative," that they do not have management responsibilities and are seldom allowed to use their own judgement, according to extracts published by SiliconValley.com.