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by sadturnip 2477 days ago
EA might not care about making the best games possible, but they sure as hell did care about their employees when i worked there. When i worked there i think i was on crunch maybe 2 weeks out of the 5 years i was there. I worked with people who had been there for 10+ years and they sang praise for how people were handled internally.

I do however know there were a lot of people there who would basically force themselves into crunch mode for no reason, other than to perfect or try to add a specific feature. Even when they were heavily dissuaded by both management. I have a very specific memory of someone crunching for ~6 months to finish their little pet project only to completely burn out.

Also as far as i know when crunch was required, it required a bunch of approval, and we were paid extra during crunch time, and we were allowed to refuse to do crunch.

2 comments

> I worked with people who had been there for 10+ years and they sang praise for how people were handled internally.

EA developed a reputation for abusing their employees first and only after facing tons of bad press and lawsuits did they promise to try to turn that around.

I mean, props to them if they really have improved things, but in order to get there they had to be dragged kicking and screaming

This has been my experience as well as an employee.