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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.
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.
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.
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.
Not really. Maybe for some small-time people starting up with their first game.
But I honestly doubt anyone was so pissed off about Gran Turismo 4 being delayed until today to be released (I await the UPS man currently) that people won't still buy the damn game. They want it, they will get it, whenever it comes.
Duke Nuken Forever will fly off the shelves, if/when it ever gets released.
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I suspect EA is trying to survive. I don't know what kind of profits they're making but there is a lot of competition in the gaming space. If they set realisting deadlines and add more programmers, it could easily double their production costs. I somehow doubt they're making 50% profit margins. They're prefectly justified in reducing costs anywhere they think they can get away with it. If the programmers don't like the way things are run and think they can do a better, why doesn't a group of them get together and start a rival company. These aren't coal miners or auto workers. The infrastructure costs to get started are close to zero. If they're smart enough to be good software engineers, they're smart enough to start a software company.
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.
Ah...so complete crap includes the Medal of Honor games? The Command & Conquer games? The SSX games? The FIFA games? The Need for Speed games? The Burnout games? The Battlefield 1942 games?
I'm having a difficult time spotting the crap amidst all these highly acclaimed titles. Perhaps you're looking at a different list than I?
BTW, Two Towers and Return of the King were both fine games that god pretty much solidly good reviews...Could they have been better with more time? Probably (true of pretty much every game). Does that mean they were bad as they shipped? Hardly.
Has EA made some games that I think sucked? Absolutely. Do they still? Absolutely (with any developer of that size there is BOUND to be something). But does that mean that they haven't made lots of great games? Well, if that were the case, they wouldn't still be in business, would they?