EA Programmer Abuse Story in Salon
The EA and game development programmer abuse story has gone mainstream. This article appears in today's Salon:
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An excerpt:
The criticism of Electronic Arts is hardly limited to online venting by geeks and their loved ones. The company is now facing a class action lawsuit that, if certified, could encompass hundreds of current and former workers at the company, including animators, modelers and environmental artists. The plaintiffs are seeking back pay for uncompensated overtime.
Stay tuned to developer.* for more on this issue. Coming soon we will be publishing an interview with a board member from the International Game Developers Association, and also a 20 year old essay by Gerald Weinberg on this same subject.
Dan
Quote from the EA Memo
In the interest of balancing out the quote from the EA spouse, who is understandably skeptical (and I am too), this is from the EA senior VP Rusty Rueff:
Second, we’re doing something that no one has ever done before: No entertainment software company has ever scaled to this size. We take it for granted sometimes, but it’s important to recognize this fact. Every day is a learning day with new competitors, new consumers, new people working on bigger teams – and all of this amid rapidly changing technology. We experiment, we learn from our mistakes, we adapt and we grow.
Most important: we recognize that this doesn’t get fixed with one email or in one month. It’s an on-going process of communication and change. And while I realize that the issue today is how we work – I think we should all remember that there are also a lot of great benefits to working at EA that are not offered at other companies. With some smart thinking and specific actions we will fix these issues and become stronger as a company.
Dan
Story Follow-Up
Salon ran this follow-up on the "Santa's Sweatshop" story:
More on Santa's Sweatshop
I like this quote from the "EA spouse":
Dan