Epic Employees Describe Hostile Working Environment and 100 Hour Weeks

Epic employees have revealed they often work 100 hour weeks under a ‘toxic culture of fear’ in order to push regular updates for Fortnite.

Full story; https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/gaming/fortnite-latest-patch-update-weekly-challenge-season-release-date-epic-games-hours-a8884226.html%3famp

If that's true then they'd literally have no free time. That's more than 14 hours a day assuming they work 7 days a week!

Spread out over a 5 day week it'd be 20 hours a day!

You'd really have to love your job to work that much!

Didn't Rockstar staff have the same issues reported last year?

I'd like to see some pay stubs for those 100 hour weeks.

That’s horrible. The gaming industry is going to have to unionize, there’s really no other way.

Tencent exporting those Chinese sweatshop practices to Epic :P

Welcome to the meatgrinder work culture of the modern USA: work for a famous company, do lame labor, think it looks good on your resume, and bail after two years if 100-hour weeks. If you're lucky, you still have passion for the field you chose. If not, you probably made a wise call and can go find something that is reasonable.

When I got out of college I took a job with a startup. It paid fairly OK, but I worked about 90 hours a week. With overtime I was making close to six figures, which is pretty awesome for a young 20-something.

Not. Worth. It. It just is not.

@mrbojangles25: I can see how that’s true. I made a small “fighting game”, and it beat all the motivation out of me. I can work with some help with people in the future, but “never again” is how I would describe the experience of working alone. Not fun.

Gotta cash in on them Fortnite gamers while the game is still relevant, so no free time for Epic's slaves.

@Starshine_M2A2: This is proof that whiny, sloppy, self-entitled cowards: do not need games supporting them; forever. I encountered them during Switch Fortnite gaming, and I never played that cesspool since.

Go online in forums and watch streamers and it's a continuous flow of bitching about lack of content in games. This reminds me of a few years back when it was in all the news about the crunch put on long haul truck drivers, what they did to keep themselves going, the accidents it caused. And we focused on the employers but never on the customers. I know I've been that guy standing in front of the meat counter, mad that I couldn't find the cut of meat or species of fish i was looking for, then I went somewhere else and bought it.

So with so much competition and so much money in the BR genre right now, Epic can be the responsible guy or it can be the guy making money, but that choice exists because of us. Fortnite players could stop buying skins, stop streaming the game over this, but they won't. In fact, if you take a glance at the Fortnite content creators on twitter and YouTube, this story is kind of a footnote to the "larger" story revolving around unhappiness over the recent Dev blog and how Epic isn't listening to their fans.