Tomb Raider, Guardians Of The Galaxy Dev Shifts To 4-Day Work Week In Big Shift For AAA Game Studios

Eidos Montreal and its sister studio Eidos Sherbrooke are shifting to a four-day workweek in an effort to work smarter and more efficiently. Studio head David Anfossi said in a blog post that the Guardians of the Galaxy and Shadow of the Tomb Raider studio is undergoing the change as part of its effort to build a "healthy, creative, and sustainable work environment for our employees."

This change will begin in the "next few weeks" at Eidos Montreal and Eidos Sherbrooke, with employees working Monday-Thursday instead of Monday-Friday. Employee salaries and working conditions are staying the same as part of the reduction to a 32-hour work week. Eidos has about 600 employees, according to its LinkedIn profile page.

Anfossi said the idea is not to cram 40 hours of work into four days instead of five, but rather to work more efficiently by reviewing how the studio operates and focusing on quality. In the end, Anfossi hopes this change will lead to an increase in productivity and well-being for its staffers.

"Concretely, we want to reduce the time at work, but increase the quality of this time invested, whether it's on a team-basis or for the studio as a whole," Anfossi said.

Individual teams will work together to come up with a plan to "define the parameters and criteria for success" with respect to work and deadlines under the new 32-hour work week. Anfossi said the overarching plan is to cut out wasted time and focus on efficiency, and part of this includes having internal meetings run for 30 minutes instead of an hour.

Anfossi said Eidos has been thinking for a while already about how it can implement systems to increase efficiency without compromising on the health and well-being of its employees. Implementing the four-day work week has already proven to be successful in places like Iceland, Anfossi said, and for Eidos, he said it should help "cultivate the creativity and motivation of the teams, and become a real driver of innovation and performance."

Also in the blog post, Anfossi acknowledged that remote working has already "transformed" how teams collaborate. This four-day work week is a step further with regards to adapting to trying something new to help employees work more efficiently and be happier and more satisfied at work.

Eidos, which is owned by Square Enix, appears to be the first AAA game developer to adopt a four-day working week. Young Horses, the smaller independent developer behind Bugsnax, moved to a four-day work week in July.

Eidos Montreal's next game is Guardians of the Galaxy, which launches on October 26. The company's sister studio at Sherbrooke is a "technical solutions" outfit that assists the game development teams at Eidos Montreal.