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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:Yeah, they recently sent out a letter to all devs, presumably they will be shadowbanning spam reskin games and blacklisting devs that make them going forward I heard something about that, but iirc it wasn't because of any consumer protection or pushback directly, it's because they're doing some totally and absolutely not NFT thing with actual monetary value tied to your playstation achievements and realized people would (are currently?) gaming the cheap shovelware for easy achievement points.
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Nov 26, 2022 21:39
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:I heard something about that, but iirc it wasn't because of any consumer protection or pushback directly, it's because they're doing some totally and absolutely not NFT thing with actual monetary value tied to your playstation achievements and realized people would (are currently?) gaming the cheap shovelware for easy achievement points. No because those rewards are always for specific games and achievements. The little awards aren't in any way an NFT thing because they're not tradeable or anything like that, just profile decorations and not tied to shut sort of chain.
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Nov 26, 2022 21:49
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They definitely presented it in a very NFT-ish way, but as far as I can tell, there's no actual momentary value to any of it or even a way to trade.
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Nov 27, 2022 07:17
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https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-much-does-from-software-crunchquote:Following the success of Elden Ring, a series of negative reviews of From Software surfaced on Twitter, claiming that staff at the studio often faced excessive overtime and a chronic dissatisfaction with pay. quote:One source was quick to refute the stereotypes of Japanese companies overworking their staff: "The general industry in Japan is not that crazy compared to my experience in other fields. Japan has a lot of holidays [and] there is a rule that [From Software] staff shouldn't stay later than 10pm, and 90% of the time, staff won't stay later than 9pm." quote:One suggested the long hours are a bit like playing Dark Souls. "It's kind of tense in a way," they say. "There's a lot of struggle to get things right, but if you get over the hump it is very satisfying. It's just like you defeated a boss in Dark Souls."
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Nov 29, 2022 16:25
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$25k for a full time job making a game in intense crunch environment? That's not sustainable in the cheapest areas of the US much less Tokyo.
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Nov 29, 2022 16:35
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Bucnasti posted:Well before that Atari was getting away with a ton of anti-competive stuff, in the early days of the VCS they locked up manufacturing capacity at the chip manufacturers to prevent them from producing chips that could be used in competing consoles, they formed a shell company to create knock-offs of their own arcade games so they could sell in multiple markets. This is interesting, because they were also getting got at the same time. I remember my parents having an old colecovision, and it had a module you could plug into it that let you play atari 2600 games, which, now that I say it out loud, makes me wonder how in the HELL they got away with that.
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Nov 29, 2022 16:37
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"Our workplace culture is pretty good actually, we get to go home at 10pm" 
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Nov 29, 2022 16:47
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Gamers don't care about crunch or sexual harassment unless it happens at a company they already hate for other, stupider reasons.
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Nov 29, 2022 17:15
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There was a lot of talk about unionizing at the '19 GDC. Did any of that go anywhere or did the plague set things back again?
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Nov 29, 2022 17:18
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quote:One suggested the long hours are a bit like playing Dark Souls. "It's kind of tense in a way," they say. "There's a lot of struggle to get things right, but if you get over the hump it is very satisfying. It's just like you defeated a boss in Dark Souls." Jesus, was an exec literally standing there with a gun to their head while they gave this interview?
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Nov 29, 2022 17:47
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Developing Dark Souls is the Dark Souls of game development
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Nov 29, 2022 18:02
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Abhorrence posted:This is interesting, because they were also getting got at the same time. I remember my parents having an old colecovision, and it had a module you could plug into it that let you play atari 2600 games, which, now that I say it out loud, makes me wonder how in the HELL they got away with that. The 2600 could be copied using completely off-the-shelf parts, so there was no copyright infringement or anything involved. Atari sued and had no actual grounds to stop the module production. However, the two companies settled with a cross-licensing agreement where ColecoVision paid royalties on the Atari module, but both companies started releasing software for each others systems - considered a win-win for both.
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Nov 29, 2022 18:12
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Arivia posted:The 2600 could be copied using completely off-the-shelf parts, so there was no copyright infringement or anything involved. Atari sued and had no actual grounds to stop the module production. However, the two companies settled with a cross-licensing agreement where ColecoVision paid royalties on the Atari module, but both companies started releasing software for each others systems - considered a win-win for both. I didn't know this, thank you. Though it is not a huge surprise that they got sued, regardless of legal precident, given the fact that, on it's face, it completely obviates the 2600 system.
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Nov 29, 2022 18:27
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pentyne posted:$25k for a full time job making a game in intense crunch environment? ”Much less Tokyo” is kind of off, especially with the yen doing what it is. Based on raw CoL, given that you can be within walking distance to work at From from a $400-$500/mo flat and eat decently (even, given the hours, takeout) on under $10/day, that's in line with high five figures in LA. That said, it's still a lovely wage where you're barely treading water after expenses, made worse by just how alienated you are from the profits your work pulls in. And if you ever want to start a family, rents start to climb way up.
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Nov 29, 2022 18:34
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Rarity posted:"Our workplace culture is pretty good actually, we get to go home at 10pm" the context here is that for the really bad companies you just sleep at your desk and never go home in the first place
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Nov 29, 2022 18:47
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How the hell can a company hire competent developers at that salary? $25k for a software dev is not possible.
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Nov 29, 2022 18:56
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They really only need to pay the top people well. There’s probably a large supply of software developers in Japan willing to take a meager wage just to work on ~video games~.
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Nov 29, 2022 19:04
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Vegetable posted:They really only need to pay the top people well. There’s probably a large supply of software developers in Japan willing to take a meager wage just to work on ~video games~. This is not unique to Japan, for what it is worth.
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Nov 29, 2022 19:12
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Brian Worms posted:There was a lot of talk about unionizing at the '19 GDC. Did any of that go anywhere or did the plague set things back again? No industry-wide stuff but there have been some smaller unionization efforts, for example the QA team at Raven Software under Actiblizz unionized recently -- here is the website for their union.
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Nov 29, 2022 19:24
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Software salaries are low in Japan relative to the coastal United States, software salaries are low in games relative to non-games tech, the number cited is likely the low end of From's salaries. It is believable, for multiple intersecting reasons.
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Nov 29, 2022 19:27
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Rarity posted:"Our workplace culture is pretty good actually, we get to go home at 10pm"
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Nov 29, 2022 19:32
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Programming jobs have way healthier hours than that in the US, outside of startups and videogame development.
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Nov 29, 2022 19:34
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Endorph posted:if this is actually mostly true this is better than most tech jobs in both the US and japan, tbh In my experience of games and non-games tech in the United States, only games has asked me to stay past 9 under any circumstance.
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Nov 29, 2022 19:35
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I’ll echo that the games industry has consistently requested overtime far more than the wider tech industry for me as well. There is an expectation of crunch and disintegration of work-life balance in the games industry, whereas it’s mostly restricted to startups in the wider tech industry.
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Nov 29, 2022 19:38
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You could make more money walking dogs.
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Nov 29, 2022 19:38
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disposablewords posted:Jesus, was an exec literally standing there with a gun to their head while they gave this interview? I used to (keyword, used) work in the games industry as a bright eyed and bushy tailed passionate youngun and one of the things I did at the time was work a 36 hour shift starting at like 3pm on a Saturday, through Sunday, into Monday to support a 5-platform simultaneous release of a game that bellyflopped into the 50s on metacritic There were no accolades from upper management, no bonus, and the CEO gave me poo poo for nodding off at my desk on monday afternoon while waiting for QA to sign off on the day 1 patches. Just shared looks of "you and me both buddy" every time the QA lead came by and cups of coffee and commiserating stories of "this reminds me of the time" from coworkers who knew I 100% was not good to drive to starbucks myself. All of this to say there's absolutely a crab pot, learn by example, "it's not real art that you're passionate about if you don't suffer and burn out doing it" mentality that gets passed on from kids to other kids lord of the flies style, and of course management is fine with it/encourages it. At the time it was a weird point of perverse pride, "god that sucked but I proved I'm serious about this and people will remember that", but years later it's just depressing that anyone involved, myself included, thought that was an acceptable thing to happen.
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Nov 29, 2022 19:40
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You may find that the applicants to From Software are motivated in a way that dog walkers are not.
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Nov 29, 2022 19:40
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Ohtori Akio posted:In my experience of games and non-games tech in the United States, only games has asked me to stay past 9 under any circumstance.
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Nov 29, 2022 19:55
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Endorph posted:i dont work tech so this is secondhand but ime depends on the sector of tech you work in. startups and stuff are definitely as bad as games Early-stage startups yes. The way it is "supposed to work" is that you are richly compensated with relatively undiluted company equity in exchange for your heads-down grindset. No such compensation exists at mature game companies for the most crunch-intensive roles. I have only worked at medium-size (100-1000 heads) tech firms, and similar-sized game firms. So I have not been exposed to the pressures of a young company.
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Nov 29, 2022 20:02
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If life sucks at a tech startup you just up and find a better company after reaching your vesting cliff. There’s light at the end of the tunnel.
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Nov 29, 2022 20:06
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I work at a software company of around 200 employees total (and not all programmers) and we just have to make 40 weekly hours. I only really had to do overtime like, 5 times for emergencies and the catch is I get to remove those hours from later on the week. Which makes me glad I quit videogame development the moment my first project went to poo poo and also saw the conditions. Basically crunch is absolutely not necessary in 90% of the cases, it's just horrible management. GiantRockFromSpace fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Nov 29, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2022 20:08
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Endorph posted:i dont work tech so this is secondhand but ime depends on the sector of tech you work in. startups and stuff are definitely as bad as games The tech startups I've worked for, including those in the mobile games market, were some of the easiest-going places I've been at. On the level of come in at 10 to noon and leave at 5. The only people who flunked out were people who were not doing actual work. Even at the place where we had one QA guy who played WoW at his desk during work hours was given a soft touch because he completed all his tasks and there were no issues with his reports in terms of quality or quantity. The worst places have all been large corporations where no one actually cares about the products or the quality of work. Just absolutely grinding people out at the whims of upper management trying to play oracles with reports from marketing.
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Nov 29, 2022 20:21
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GiantRockFromSpace posted:I work at a software company of around 200 employees total (and not all programmers) and we just have to make 40 weekly hours. I only really had to do overtime like, 5 times for emergencies and the catch is I get to remove those hours from later on the week. It’s important to emphasize how much this is not unique to games or tech industry. Crunch is everywhere and is always a failure of management, it just doesn’t have a unique name - fast food workers will routinely need to do 16 hour days because someone calls in for their shift or the manager “forgot”, customer service jobs will have you take overnight shifts on a whim. Same story. As ever, the reason to unionize and collectively bargain is there all along.
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Nov 29, 2022 20:31
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disposablewords posted:Jesus, was an exec literally standing there with a gun to their head while they gave this interview?
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Nov 29, 2022 20:34
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Waifu Radia posted:It’s important to emphasize how much this is not unique to games or tech industry. Crunch is everywhere and is always a failure of management, it just doesn’t have a unique name - fast food workers will routinely need to do 16 hour days because someone calls in for their shift or the manager “forgot”, customer service jobs will have you take overnight shifts on a whim. Same story. It's also extremely generous to assume people get paid for many of those hours. One of the more commonly reported tactics is managers forcing people to clock out, then stay another hour to finish cleaning.
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Nov 29, 2022 20:37
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pentyne posted:It's also extremely generous to assume people get paid for many of those hours. One of the more commonly reported tactics is managers forcing people to clock out, then stay another hour to finish cleaning. This is not just commonly reported. I’m sure multiple folks here, myself included, have had it happen, and Amazon famously won a court case to not have to pay for the hours it can take to go through security to enter a warehouse.
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Nov 29, 2022 20:40
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Taken from this article: quote:The studio does not permit employees to give interviews, whether they still work at From Software or not. As such, all sources wished to remain anonymous. How exactly does this work? There are soft reasons to not speak poorly of past employers, and NDAs/non-disparagements are common in lawsuits in the US, but is this a normal thing in Japan? You don't get to give interviews about your former employer?
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Nov 29, 2022 20:42
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It's nice to finally get some reporting on this. There were screenshots of Fromsoft job postings circulating shortly after Elden Ring's release but absolutely zero context or effort to talk with their employees.
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Nov 29, 2022 21:41
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Waifu Radia posted:It’s important to emphasize how much this is not unique to games or tech industry. Crunch is everywhere and is always a failure of management, it just doesn’t have a unique name - fast food workers will routinely need to do 16 hour days because someone calls in for their shift or the manager “forgot”, customer service jobs will have you take overnight shifts on a whim. Same story. Should probably point out that "crunch" is even more normalized for Japanese corporations across the board, compared to the west. It's become something the government is increasingly trying to address to get Japanese work cultures to stop considering 12-hour workdays to be the standard, as it bogs down productivity and family life. It's not even an issue of workers having too much to do in an 8-hour shift, people generally don't want to be seen leaving work before the boss or anyone else
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Nov 29, 2022 23:34
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Shooting Blanks posted:How exactly does this work? There are soft reasons to not speak poorly of past employers, and NDAs/non-disparagements are common in lawsuits in the US, but is this a normal thing in Japan? You don't get to give interviews about your former employer? Loyalty to the company is a BIG thing in Japanese business culture because the common belief is the company will also take care of their employees. Firings are extremely rare because they are such a black mark and companies would rather demote or relocate someone within the company for under-performing than dump them entirely. Former employees probably aren't prevented by any sort of contract to talk about their employment, but going against the wishes of the company could get them blacklisted by other companies friendly towards From. It's a pretty insular industry and many of the bosses/managers are probably drinking buddies. je1 healthcare posted:It's not even an issue of workers having too much to do in an 8-hour shift, people generally don't want to be seen leaving work before the boss or anyone else And then if the boss invites you for several hours of drinking after your 12 hour shift, you're generally expected to go.
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Nov 29, 2022 23:49
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