EA game company Evil? Challenge Everything.

I’ve always had a soft spot for EA because of some of the beautiful, entertaining, brilliant games they’ve published and/or created, such as:

Aliens vs. Predator
Clive Barker’s Undying
Dungeon Keeper 1 & 2
Battlefield 1942
Black & White
Command & Conquer
System Shock 2
Syndicate
Alice
Freedom Force

The list goes on. If you wish to see all of them, check out this rap list at MobyGames.

Lately, despite the fabulous games they’ve delivered, I’ve started to dislike the company. It would seem they’ve started to do nice things such as swallowing teams whole and then firing them… Or worse.

Someone just sent me a link to the following blog, which I found very interesting, very frightening, and even more sad, since no one likes to find out how true their worst fears about a former hero are. It’s written by the spouse of an EA minion.

And the kicker: for the honor of this treatment EA salaried employees receive a) no overtime; b) no compensation time! (‘comp’ time is the equalization of time off for overtime — any hours spent during a crunch accrue into days off after the product has shipped); c) no additional sick or vacation leave. The time just goes away. Additionally, EA recently announced that, although in the past they have offered essentially a type of comp time in the form of a few weeks off at the end of a project, they no longer wish to do this, and employees shouldn’t expect it. Further, since the production of various games is scattered, there was a concern on the part of the employees that developers would leave one crunch only to join another. EA’s response was that they would attempt to minimize this, but would make no guarantees. This is unthinkable; they are pushing the team to individual physical health limits, and literally giving them nothing for it. Comp time is a staple in this industry, but EA as a corporation wishes to “minimize” this reprieve. One would think that the proper way to minimize comp time is to avoid crunch, but this brutal crunch has been on for months, and nary a whisper about any compensation leave, nor indeed of any end of this treatment.

Anyway, click here to read the rest of the article.