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EA Settles Overtime Lawsuit
Heffenfeffer writes "Gamasutra reports that Electronic Arts is settling their class action suit with their programmers to the tune of $14.9 million. It also turns out that one of the named plaintiffs of said lawsuit was the spouse of the formerly anonymous blogger "ea_spouse" who wrote a scathing commentary on EA over a year ago which may have formed the basis of this suit."
mix of the two really. With the job market full of bursted bubblers it's hard for a new grad to get their foot in the door with a lot of companies. EA has a good policy for accepting programmers without 5+ years of experiance so they end up with a large number of fresh grads working for lower wages because they are still wet behind the ears. After 12 months of working a crappy job to pay the bills, and 1500 unansered resumes I applied there. I got a different job before EA offered an interview, but after that long of saying "how can I help you today sir?" ANYTHING looks like a good job.
At least until I've seen what's behind the curtain. Yes, I do have the math skills, the DX experience and the necessary understanding to create a good engine.
But I certainly don't want to see my creativity shattered under unbearable timetables. I don't mind doing overtime. Currently, an average work day is like 10-12 hours. 'cause it's fun.
Being FORCED to work 14 hours and more is by no means any kind of motivation. Actually, I'd probably start sabotaging my own work.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The last EA game I bought (Command and Conquere Generals) had so many bugs it was basically unplayable out of the box. 12 months later there were still so many bugs that every other game ended literally in a few seconds at the hands of a cheater. 3+ years on I'm still holding my breath for the "ladder kit" that was promised. Their response to user complaints? They had one employee who would troll the message boards 1 day a week and make empty promises about balance issues, map hacks and cheats.
Then they released a buggy expansion pack (no, there was no ladder kit in it)
EA has some amazing programmers, artists and designers, but their management has found a way to turn gold into lead. They bought Westwood and turned an award winning franchise into a fiasco. And in a misguided effort to push people towards the new bug-riddled C&C they killed the established C&C comminity by shutting down all the game servers and forum servers for the older releases.
It boggles the mind how irrational and out of touch they are with their customers and employees.
It's not clear from TFA.. did EA actually lose a case (as in being ruled against in court of law,) or is this an out-of-court settlement?
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So did EA change how they operate? Or did they shell out the $ as a "cost of doing business" and are continuing to overwork the poor guys? Are there any EA headcounts here that can vouch for them (either in the negative or positive)?
and, on a side note, I wonder how this affects (if at all) EA Canada.