Pachter Says Team Bondi "Wasn't Entitled to Overtime Pay"

[CatmanStu]

Reading the comments here it makes me contemplate two things.

1 - As I understand it Michael Pachter is an investment analyst who specialises in the games industry, not a games expert, as such he is a lot more qualified to comment on the nature of target driven business practices than most people here as his own success (wealth) will be down to his recomendations being effective target hitters (ergo making him an effective target hitter).

2 - This conversation seems to have devided into two factions; the cynics and the idealists. Both are arguing with each other, yet both are right. If you enter into a salaried contract then you have to read the fine print because you are AGREEING to work any overtime for free but, on the flip side, any employer that abuses this agreement is morally abhorent and should be accountable.

My personal opinion is that in the current world economy anybody who has a job is fortunate, anybody who has a job they enjoy is very fortunate, and anybody who is successful in a job they enjoy is blessed. I'd imagine that game developers fall into the second one at the very least. They may not enjoy the constraints it places on their lives, but I would hope that if they have dedicated their live to making the thiings we all love, that they loved making them.

 

[Mr.Squishy]

What
A
Tool
You know what? Lock him in a room with nothing but a PC, some programming instructions and an electric shock when he stops programming for more than five seconds, then knock off for a week and come back, then give him no overtime pay.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

employees coming forward to complain about brutal, near-abusive working conditions and a drawn-out crunch period that saw employees working 110-hour weeks without being paid overtime

......what? And Pachter thinks they have no right to complain about that?!

Look, I get it. Crunch time (the last time segment when making a game) is a crazy hard time for everyone. I get that the game needs to get done ASAFP so it gets shipped on time. I GET and ACCEPT that there will be overtime. I get that the company can't be expected to pay all of it. But if the crunch time is longer than 3 months (being generous here), and they are working 110 hour weeks and there isn't even overtime pay....yeah, there is a problem there. A big problem.

And if the employees were suffering near abusive and brutal working conditions then hell yes they have the right to raise a fuss. You don't treat your employees like slaves like that. I get that crunch time is harsh, but jeez...110 hours a week, AND crap working conditions? ...Not cool.

 

[Dash-X]

a good solution would be to send him to a coal mine and have him work those 110 unpaid overtime weeks, after 2-3 months we'd hear about some unfair work conditions, what a douchebag this guy.

The problem is that working in a coal mine is too good for Pachter. If you really wanna punish him, make him work on a dev team for 110-hours a week. As a programmer! And he can watch in insomnia-fueled slow motion as his wife cheats on him while he's away, and his children slowly forget who the hell he is. Oh yeah, and he'd gradually get to watch his body turn to dough.

I dunno who this Pachter joker is, but he seems to be a dude that knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

 

[vxicepickxv]

Damn, I thought I was doing bad at 84 hours a week.

 

[Grampy_bone]

Pachter is half-right. Some developers share profits and everyone gets a slice of a big selling game. Most though hire a bunch of grunt-work programmers, work them like indentured servants for 18 months, hand them a meager salary, and fire them when the game ships. Its pretty much the same project-centered model used by Hollywood, only without the SAG and all it's associated perks.

Short answer: game programmers need to unionize. Hell, the entire tech field needs to unionize.

 

[Warachia]

Words, words, words

I basically just read the first paragraph of your post, because the rest turned to pointless drivel quickly. So I'll just answer that first one, shan't I?

Insomniac being listed as one of the ten best small-companies to work for means absolute shit in this context. All it means is that the guys who work there are veterans (they are) of the industry and know how shit works.

As for the rest, let's go through those companies you listed: VALVe, Blizzard, BioWare, DICE... Any common denominator between these guys? That's right - ZERO PUBLISHER INTERFERENCE. I'll bet you the entirety of my life that before DICE released Battlefield 1942, before BioWare released Baldur's Gate, before Blizzard released WarCraft, before VALVe released Half-Life, every single one of those understood and lived with the concept of crunch time. What happened after all those notable releases? Each and everyone of them basically became self-published. People threw money at them screaming "MAKE ANYTHING!!!", not caring how long it would take, because regardless it sell like shit in a farmer's market.

If you can't show numbers like that you'll just have to live with the publisher that's handing you money to get your game done wanting to see some results at specific dates.

Let's skip the fact that you completely ignored what he said and look at the bullshit you made up, companies like BioWare are NOT self published, and publisher interference results in less worker abuse and more in shitty games. They were given money not because what they made would sell, but because they could handle it well.

 

[Cropsy91]

This guy talks about game developers as if they're objects. He doesn't take into account for a second that many of these developers have families and lives to attend to outside of game developing.

Quite frankly, it's pretty disgusting.

 

[Virgilthepagan]

Honestly, I'm more than a little annoyed with Pachter right now. I'd never really paid close attention to him before but this is just painful.

I normally worked between sixty to seventy five hours a week at any point this summer (internship+actual job), and that's been hell. Finding time to sleep, eat, shop for food or other necessities, even basic things like paying bills or occasionally talking to a friend are hard to do. Add on basically a third full time job for no additional money, then take my summer of three months and multiply it by two. Reasonable? No, no it's not at all, that's abusive to the employees in the extreme.

Furthermore, are bonuses going to the entire company? Or just to specific people dotting the top tiers of the office hierarchy? Even if they are going to everyone, and that's assuming this game is wildly successful, will it account for the up to triple time these workers were asked to put in over several months? Probably not. Honestly blaming the workers for complaining about abuse is doubly wonderful when it comes from someone standing safely on the sidelines.

 

[Warachia]

Reading the comments here it makes me contemplate two things.

1 - As I understand it Michael Pachter is an investment analyst who specialises in the games industry, not a games expert, as such he is a lot more qualified to comment on the nature of target driven business practices than most people here as his own success (wealth) will be down to his recomendations being effective target hitters (ergo making him an effective target hitter).

Sadly he is not an effective target hitter as he is wrong as often as he is right, and when he is right it's almost always predicting the obvious barely before it happens. I'd agree technically that he is more qualified after reading the escapist's article on him, but he essentially throws everything he learned out the window before making his predictions. Even if he is a top hitter (which he isn't) that still leaves him in little more than personal opinion on today's argument.

2 - This conversation seems to have *divided into two factions; the cynics and the idealists. Both are arguing with each other, yet both are right. If you enter into a salaried contract then you have to read the fine print because you are AGREEING to work any overtime for free but, on the flip side, any employer that abuses this agreement is morally abhorent and should be accountable.

My personal opinion is that in the current world economy anybody who has a job is fortunate, anybody who has a job they enjoy is very fortunate, and anybody who is successful in a job they enjoy is blessed. I'd imagine that game developers fall into the second one at the very least. They may not enjoy the constraints it places on their lives, but I would hope that if they have dedicated their live to making the *things we all love, that they loved making them.

Off Topic: I'd disagree with you here, somebody already sent time analyzing the amount of time you'd spend on projects with these hours to the point where you'd have a job, and nothing else, no social life, no time to work on your own projects, and barely enough time to sleep (the deprivation of which would add up over time).

 

[SirDoom]

Well, I can see having to work maybe 50 or so hours a week with no overtime compensation. That's the tradeoff of a salaried position- Higher pay, but working 50 hours a week isn't unusual.

However, when it gets to the point where you could say "I worked 110 hours this week. I essentially got paid for 60 of those hours at a reasonable wage for my field, and was forced to work the other 50 for nothing", then there is a problem. If that happens for months at a time, that's just abuse of employees. An hour or two here or there is acceptable, but this? Just... no.

...and the "bonuses" that publishers have a bad habit of holding back these days are hardly justification for working your employees to death half of the year. People work so they can afford their bills and have money to spend on hobbies and relaxation. But what good is being able to afford a nice house if you're working so much that you never get to live in it? Only in this case, you aren't even making enough to afford a nice house. More like a nice apartment.

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

This guy is a fucking wanker.

Here're some more of his pearls of wisdom.

I share your sentiment ! that guy's opinion doesn't have much effect, even if he got his own show. Sure he's good with the numbers, but predicting stuff is relative. And this guy has his mind so much tweaked that it's probably difficult for him to think out of the box. Either that, or he's a terribly good liar.

 

[Monsterfurby]

From my experience in the industry (as project manager), I have to agree with the man. He is not saying that employees are not entitled to overtime pay, but that unpaid overtime during the final weeks before release is an absolutely common business practice. It is also common to essentially pay for the irregular overtime during that period depending on payouts received after completion. This is common in the industry and has been since its inception - Team Bondi's complaining is really far detached from the industry reality.

PS: I spent five weeks sleeping in the office on a camp bed, so I do know what they are talking about.

 

[SemiHumanTarget]

This makes a lot of sense, and is common practice in many other industries. I work in advertising and don't get paid overtime. We are instead expected to manage our time well and do what it takes to get the job done. Then we get a big fat bonus.

Industries that are based on royalties and bonuses don't do overtime for a reason. There should be incentive to put out a good product, not to just finish it.

I once worked a project-based job where I was paid a flat, hourly rate regardless of how long it took me to finish the job. What do you think I did? I purposefully worked at a speed that would maximize my pay while keeping my schedule as convenient for me as possible. Quality of the work didn't factor into it for me.

Why would we want the people making our games getting paid overtime when they already get bonuses? It takes away any incentive to put out a good product.

 

[Zac Smith]

Sorry what? How aren't they intitled to over-time? If you're working 110 hour weeks without being paid overtime, you're being used as a slave.

Sometimes Michael Pachter needs to shut his face.

Ever been on a salary? I have been on several. In a salary contract it often says that you need to work "the hours necessary" Now I don't what know their contracts say but in the past I have worked 80+ hours a week with no overtime and no bonus, it was the only way to get the work done. If your offered a salary then you need to be prepared for that kind of thing.

While that is true and it's not as bad as it sounds, there has to be some kind of legal limit to what "necessary" hours can be asked of you. I don't think it's legal to have people work 20hr days 7 days a week, where I live anyway.

True, when you start work, most companies have a limit to the amount of over time you can do. I can be asked to do up to an extra 25ish hours, which they have to pay, any thing else over that is of my own accord

 

[Sarah Frazier]

Ugh... People deserve to be paid extra for working ridiculous hours. In this case, they'd be working close to 16 hours a day, every day. I'm not sure, but I think only doctors end up working more hours in a shift and surely they get some kind of compensation for it.

This "analyst" doesn't deserve the comfortable pay he gets if he honestly believes that people working insane hours don't deserve any kind of compensation. Who wants to bet that he expects ridiculous wages for spouting his opinions as if they were facts?

 

[Raddra]

There should be a law that limits the hours a salary employee can work because obviously in this industry salary = exploitation.

Agreed.

Its about time the law stepped in and protected these people from this blatant slavery exploitation.

 

[Korolev]

Well, I'd have to look at the contract between Team Bondi and its employees (I'm not actually going to do it), but Patcher really strikes me as a rather... cold person.

Depending on contract law, Team Bondi may or may not have been legally required to pay overtime. But they should have. Not out of the kindness of their heart (no company ever does anything out of the kindness of their heart) but from pure common sense - harassed and harried employees do not make good games. You might argue that L.A was a good game - and I agree, it was - but it took 9 years to make and it transferred studios. A game like L.A Noire should not have taken 9 years to make, even with the fancy dancy motion capture tech. Something was deeply wrong at Team Bondi.

Patcher is speaking as a businessman (although I'm not aware of any business he owns or has been involved with). This is how business people and investors speak and think and act. I'm not surprised at all that Patcher is like this. I've met more than my fair share of business people and the good ones are all equally ruthless. That's just their nature. I'm not outraged at what Patcher has said, because, frankly, I've heard so much worse from people I've met in real life.