How Fortnite's success led to months of intense crunch at Epic Games

The popularity of Fortnite has transformed Epic Games. But the explosive growth of the game led to months of tense crunching of Epic employees and freelancers. Some of them complain of excessive pressure and long work shifts supporting Fortnite's success and profitability . All this led to the creation of a toxic, stressful environment in the company.

In a dozen or more interviews conducted by Polygon over the course of several months, current and former employees say they regularly had to work 70 hours a week, and some even report hourly weeks. Epic's freelance staff for quality control and customer support speaks of a stressful and hostile environment in which refining (albeit officially considered voluntary) is considered a must.

Freelance employees are paid for processing, but developers report creating a culture of fear in which they are expected to see processing hours as part of their work time. Some report health problems resulting from many months of work from 70-hour weeks.

Stress processing is called "crunch", and sometimes it stretches for weeks and even months. In the gaming industry, it is usually associated with the period before the immediate release of the game. But in our era of “early access,” constant updates, downloadable content, and the games as a service model, crunch can be a constant problem.

Some people and organizations, such as Game Workers Unite , urge game industry workers to join unions to protect their rights. Many game industry workers are hired as freelancers, thus limiting their rights .

Epic released Fortnite Battle Royaleas a free game in September 2017. In it, a hundred players are dumped on the island and fight with each other until only one remains. The game came after the summer release of Fortnite: Save the World , in which the teams of players work together, collecting prey to protect against zombie hordes. Although Epic spent many years releasing the original Save the World , it quickly launched the Battle Royale into the market in response to the success of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds for Windows and the imminent release of this game on consoles.

Fortnite Battle Royale quickly turned into a cultural phenomenon, earning Epic millions of dollars a dayand its rapid growth funding. At the moment, this is the most popular game in the world, especially among children. It is regularly updated: new weapons and map modifications appear, which are watched vividly by millions of players and fans. In just a few months, some of Fortnite 's most popular streamers have become multimillionaires.

Fortnite Battle Royale is part of a broader trend in video games called “games as a service”: popular games are constantly being updated, new modes, skins, weapons and characters are added to keep the audience playing. Such a departure from the standard release of individual products meant for game creators a continuous series of impending deadlines.

Polygon interviewed current and former Epic employees, including full-time staff, managers, and freelancers in the development, quality control, and customer service departments. All of them asked to hide their names, fearing retaliation from Epic or other employers in the gaming industry. Epic requires both current and former employees to sign a non-disclosure agreement that limits the discussion of company actions.

“On average, I work 70 hours a week,” says one employee. “Most likely, at least 50 or even 100 other Epic employees work on this schedule. I know people who have to work 100 hours a week. The company gives us unlimited holidays, but taking advantage of this time is almost impossible. If I take a vacation, then the load on others will increase, so no one wants to be “bad”. ”

“The biggest problem is that we constantly make patches. Top management seeks to stretch the popularity of Fortnite as long as possible , especially taking into account emerging new competitors. ”

An Epic spokesman admitted that workers have to withstand excessive workloads. “Our people work hard at Fortniteand other Epic projects, ”a company spokesperson told us in an email interview. “Emergencies such as working 100 hours a week are very rare, and in such cases, we immediately try to find a solution so that this does not happen again."

But the demand to meet the needs of players and maintain the pace of development of the game led some to experience constant crunch.

“Senior management is constantly responding to the situation and making changes,” a source told us. “Everything needs to be done instantly. We are not allowed to waste time on anything. If something breaks down - say, a weapon - then we cannot just turn it off and fix it in the next patch. The bug needs to be fixed immediately, and at the same time, we continue to work on the patch for the next week. Everything is very tough. ”

“I sleep a little. Irritated, behaving with loved ones. I do not have enough energy to get into the city. The most important achievement is a day off from work. If I take leave on Saturday, I feel guilty. I’m not forced to work like that, but if I don’t do it, then the work will not be done. ”

Epic reported that the sudden success of Fortnite Battle Royale created difficulties for her. “ Fortnite has achieved far more success than we could have expected,” a company spokesman said. “Thanks to incredible energy and perseverance, every Epic employee is responsible for this success. Fortnite Development Teamquickly expanding the game to increase its audience; Unreal Engine developers launched a large-scale optimization project to achieve stable 60fps and support for seven platforms; all other employees of the company started working on Fortnite to maintain the pace of its development. "

According to many sources, it is understood that crunch is an expected part of their work for Epic employees. This attitude toward crunch has become the standard in the AAA games industry, and has been consistently noted in crunch stories from other studios .

“I know people who refused to work on weekends, and then we missed the deadline due to the fact that their part of the project was not completed, and they were fired,” another source said. “People are losing their jobs because they don’t want to work on such a schedule.”

Another source reports: “I have friends who said that they couldn’t stand it anymore. Some sobbed. Crunch never ends. ”

“Usually we worked 50 or 60 hours a week, occasionally 70 hours,” says one source who worked as a freelance employee in the quality control department. “If my eight-hour shift ended and I asked my boss if I should stay, then he looked at me like an idiot. Official processing is not necessary, but in practice they tell you that you need to stay at work. If you didn’t recycle, then this is a bad characteristic for you. ”

Another source says that freelancers who refused to recycle often found a replacement. “You have a contract. It can last three months, maybe a year. But if you do not stay after the shift, then most likely the contract will not be extended. ”

“Management needs us to be screws that can be replaced,” says the source. “The situation was this: come to work and work as much as we need. "They put freelancers in such a position that if they don’t process it, then they won’t stay in their posts."

“One of the leaders once said:“ just get more bodies. ” So they called freelancers: bodies. And when they finish their work, you can get rid of them. They can be replaced by fresh people who do not have a "toxic" habit of being unhappy. "

When asked about the workload, an Epic spokesperson replied: “All Epic freelancers have a fixed-term contract, usually six to twelve months. "Epic decides to extend the contract based on the quality of the work performed and the willingness to work on the schedule necessary to meet the dates of critical releases."

The company spokesperson added that on average, Epic freelancers recycle “less than five hours a week.”

But for those working on Fortnite, after the success of the game, the usual rhythm of the schedule has changed a lot. “We have a gym in our office,” one source told us. “Theoretically, it is available to everyone who has free time, but free time is not allowed in work. We are constantly in a state of crunch. In such games with constant support, crunch never ends. You always have to create new content and new functionality. ”

“I worked no less than 12 hours a day, seven days a week, at least four to five months,” says one source. “Many of us had to stay at work until 3-4 a.m.”

Many sources report that refusing to work after a shift is a serious obstacle to career growth. Bosses expect employees to linger at work and not complain about anything. "

“There is no discussion,” one source says. “They just tell us:“ I hope you had no plans for the weekend, because you need to do this and that. ” And if you have any reasons for the day off, then it must be something serious, otherwise it will affect your career badly. ”

An Epic spokesperson told us that “Epic’s career paths depend on the quality of our work and whether we’ll be able to handle the job in a higher position.”

A source who worked in the customer support department and resolved the problems of the players, said: "We have jumped from 20-40 tickets per day to about 3 thousand tickets per day." The source added that Epic quickly hired new employees to deal with this flood, but the problem cannot be solved instantly, simply by expanding the staff. “It happened so fast. Just yesterday we were a small group of people. The next day, they simply told us: “Oh, by the way, 50 new people will appear in this shift without the slightest work experience.”

“The managers were very unfriendly. When I had problems and reported them to my manager, they ignored me and the manager never spoke to me again. They just didn't care. When I started to complain, one of my managers told me to shut my mouth and warned me that they would fire me. They professed the attitude “you went, I will achieve my goal”, and the leadership did nothing to prevent this. ”

“We were told that it would be necessary to work 50 hours a week and close 200 tickets a day. This is very tiring because we had to work very fast. When the management reported this, I cried because I was tired and exhausted, and it seemed to them that they did not care. ”

Epic Games is located in the city of Carey (North Carolina), its staff is about a thousand people. The company was founded in 1991 by Tim Sweeney, who remains its CEO. There are over 200 job openings on the Epic website today.

Some employees said that working in the company has many positive aspects: good pay, an excellent bonus system, career growth and an active social life. One of the sources said that he personally had never encountered crunches, despite the fact that he was working on Fortnite , and called Epic an ideal employer. But the same source admitted that some of his colleagues are indeed recycling.

“One of the groups that have to process a lot in Epic is the producers,” the source said. “They have a huge load. Producers are constantly working, working, working. It is like madness. ”

“It's a hard, monotonous, stressful life,” says one source. “Everyone treats this with understanding. You get paid more than most people can earn on any job in any other place. Your time is bought and taken into account; shut your mouth, do not arise and do your work. "

“Most employees are not against crunches if you give them a triple salary as bonuses. Many people leave. They come, think to themselves: “I will endure until I receive the bonus four times, and then quit.”

When work began to pile up, Epic tried to solve the problem by hiring additional staff. At first, the Fortnite Battle Royale team consisted of 50 people, but when it became more successful, it more than tripled.

“We constantly hired new people, and after the release of Fortnite in 2017, we doubled our permanent staff,” says an Epic spokesman. “Throughout this time, we have always been eager to hire the best people. The limiting factor of employment is not money, but the speed with which we can find and hire highly qualified personnel. ”

“We also contracted with excellent independent studios contributing to Fortnite.and reduce the burden on our staff. In addition, we have improved the Fortnite functional release planning process so that several teams work in parallel and we can reduce the load on each individual team. ”

But our sources report that these initiatives did not solve the fundamental problem of lengthy processing. “The development process was very fast,” one source said. “Things were realized in it that we did not even know about. It was crazy, I have never seen anything like this in any of my projects. ”

“Crunches were everywhere. Even the business department and office managers. The only ones who managed to avoid crunches were essentially those who forced people to go on crunches. ”

“I got to the point where I was hoping to receive a letter that there would be no crunch tonight or at least on a weekend. I was waiting for someone to say: “Tomorrow you do not need to come to work”. ”

Many of the sources told us that, until the success of Fortnite Epic, it was possible to maintain a good work culture. “We processed it when it was needed,” one source said. “But we always had enough time to prepare for the crunch, and it was not obligatory. We knew what functions we would need to work on, what the plan was, and we had enough time. ”

"When Fortnite Battle Royalebecame popular, everything has changed: now it was necessary to implement a feature, and people were forced to stay at work until it was completed. Therefore, instead of a month to prepare, as before, we sometimes had something left for about a day. We definitely had to stay at work until the task was completed. The marketing department promised something to users, and we were told that this should be done. "

" This was the most aggressive schedule of those that I saw. And people in all departments burned out. ”

“We responded to these problems by aggressively building staff, improving the planning process and experimenting with approaches,” said an Epic spokesman. The company introduced mandatory two-week vacations in winter and summer, covering all staff.

Most of our sources said that complaints to the Epic HR team did little to help.

“Some of my colleagues were patient at first, but over time they became more and more annoyed by the long work shifts. Once they could just leave the office and we never saw them again. No one spoke of them. If I asked: “Well, [this person] doesn’t work here anymore?” In response, I got strange looks. ”

In the year before the release of Fortnite Battle Royale , Epic downgraded the quality control department, aiming to move to automated systems. But after success, Battle Royale paused the initiative and quickly hired new freelancers.

“There was a huge commotion, and the offices didn’t seem to be cleaning,” says one source from the quality control department. “We were there like herring in a bank. Four people sat on each side of the table. ”

“Once I was at a meeting, and in the end it came to the quality control department, but no one said a word. Then one tester came out and asked what the company was going to do with crunches. When will the pace of work slow down? The atmosphere in the room has changed. The manager said they are trying to solve this problem. It was an unanswered answer. Soon after, the tester who asked the question left the company. ”

Epic sought to reduce the seriousness of the crunches by creating two-week update schedules that included patches and new features. The company also introduced a shift system. But the situation has not improved.

“If the assembly was released and received a negative reaction from the players, then someone at the top said:“ We need to fix this, ”says one source. “And they began to tear off all employees from their work, people were told to cancel their plans, because they would have to grunk until the task was completed. And it never stopped. Such a system is great for supporting the community and players. But she has her own price. ”

From time to time, Epic senior management has circulated directives that refining should be voluntary, but this has had little effect on the ground.

“Young employees were the most vulnerable,” one source said. “I tried to tell them that I need to go home, but they answered:“ I want to prove myself and get promoted, so I need to be in the office and work. ” The competition is very high, they are ambitious and think that working for 100 hours is normal. ”

“It kills people. Something needs to be changed. I see no opportunity to continue at the same pace for the next year. At first, this was normal, because Fortnite was a great success and we were pleased with it. We were solving problems that were new to Epic: managing a large, global game as an online service. But now the workload is just endless. ”