Bro if I was offered 10% of CDPRs anual income as a bonus I would work gladly a day extra in a week.
So you basically says that it's so interesting that they don't have to make crunch mandatory?
Bro if I was offered 10% of CDPRs anual income as a bonus I would work gladly a day extra in a week.
I'd love to hear more about all those 9-5, M-F, high paying jobs from people saying 8hr is inhumane. I wouldn't mind changing industry while I still can.
Hardly Schreier being dishonest, the bloomberg article made it clear that it was about the mandatory overtime (the FORCED overtime) and when you say you will implement a non-mandatory crunch policy and then go and do exactly that YOU ARE in fact going AGAINST YOUR WORD, whether the word promise was actually used or not.
This is nothing like "FORCED overtime". Yes, it is mandatory for the employee to perform tasks given by the employer, this is how employment works. The employer has a right to introduce overtime, with its time and payment conditions regulated by Polish labour law. There is nothing FORCED about it, employer instructs employees to perform additional tasks. The employees are protected by labour law and receive overtime pay for that effort. By your logic, every time the employer gives you a task he FORCES you to do something.
Now, FORCED overtime as you call it will actually be crunch. It will be FORCED by strongarming, manipulating and softly blackmailing employees to perform additional tasks without any time limit, payment guarantees and labour law protection. It's unlawful, toxic and should be punished. It is not the case here.
So you say that basically saying:"Do that or else you lose you job." isn't a form of coercion? (Even if as you say perfectly legal)
I thought that many people (not me, through) thought this being suicide worthy.
I remember once when one of my clients tell me she would not renew my contract because she has been fired, she started to cry even if we only was almost a stranger to her and that we were talking on phone, so much that I ended up reassuring her for almost an hour.
To sum it up, I would say it's legal coercion.
So you say that basically saying:"Do that or else you lose you job." isn't a form of coercion? (Even if as you say perfectly legal)
I thought that many people (not me, through) thought this being suicide worthy.
I remember once when one of my clients tell me she would not renew my contract because she has been fired, she started to cry even if we only was almost a stranger to her and that we were talking on phone, so much that I ended up reassuring her for almost an hour.
To sum it up, I would say it's legal coercion.
I don't know how overtime is regulated where you live, in Germany the contract says how overtime is regulated.
Here is a small excerpt from the Employee Protection Act ...
The statutory overtime regulation stipulates that in certain exceptional situations, overtime may be requested beyond the agreed hours. The answer to the question "Do I have to work overtime?" there is therefore the answer: Yes, if they have been agreed or an unforeseen situation occurs that the company could not have avoided.
I think there is a similar regulation in Poland.
Neither of us knows the details of the contracts, so I think it's a little unfair to portray CDPR as the bad guys.
Could not have said it better. Totally agree that people just have only ever heard the term "crunch" in articles totally condeming it in situations where its actually a problem and just "call the same shade of pink salmon."
It was a deliberate hyperbole and you missed the point.[...]
The problem is the word "crunch" has a negative connotation derived from past experiences elsewhere, where the said crunch was (and in some areas, still is) a problem. The fact that it also encompasses all forms of OT doesn't help the cause either. I might be wrong, but I think it was you who said the line between "crunch" and "OT" is being blurred, and that's exactly what is happening.What you quoted is exactly what happens during crunch. People get blackmailed, usually not openly but in a more covert way, that they will lose their job if they don't stay late, work weekends and don't they even dare to mention adequate pay.
This is not what happens here. The employer uses his RIGHT to ask his employees to work more and employees use their RIGHT to get payed extra for that, while having their other RIGHTS protected by law.
I don't understand how you can call a basic concept of a company paying people for performing tasks the company needs completed "coercion". It's not coercion, it's called "employment".
It was a deliberate hyperbole and you missed the point.
The problem is the word "crunch" has a negative connotation derived from past experiences elsewhere, where the said crunch was (and in some areas, still is) a problem. The fact that it also encompasses all forms of OT doesn't help the cause either. I might be wrong, but I think it was you who said the line between "crunch" and "OT" is being blurred, and that's exactly what is happening.
People don't care about facts, though... they don't care that the shutdown caused by the pandemic might have interfered with the production. They don't care that CDPR obeys Polish labor laws. None of it matters.... they see a word "crunch" (because some colorful article online wouldn't be able to generate clicks otherwise) and they pick up the pitchforks before learning anything about the situation.
What you quoted is exactly what happens during crunch. People get blackmailed, usually not openly but in a more covert way, that they will lose their job if they don't stay late, work weekends and don't they even dare to mention adequate pay.
This is not what happens here. The employer uses his RIGHT to ask his employees to work more and employees use their RIGHT to get payed extra for that, while having their other RIGHTS protected by law.
I don't understand how you can call a basic concept of a company paying people for performing tasks the company needs completed "coercion". It's not coercion, it's called "employment".
This is a very fair sentiment, too!
I certainly am not implying that only the Arts suffer from times where people need to be putting in extra hours. Talk to any teacher, any police officer, any lawyer, any doctor or nurse...talk to anyone running their own business, any farmer or rancher, any one that lays concrete for a living...any parent raising children full-time, etc. There's overtime. There's lots of overtime.
But, due to the wonders of modern, human society -- we have other options! It is totally possible for people to simply focus on getting a relatively stable job in an office, working retail, working remotely, or in the service industry that not only pays a healthy living, but also comes with relatively stable hours and scheduled vacation time. (And even those jobs will wind up having to call for overtime now and then. However, it's not going to be anything like the careers I list above. A surgeon doesn't have the luxury of saying, "No, I'm not coming in now. Ask someone else." A teacher can't decide, "Marking these 250 examinations by Thursday is taking too much of my personal time; I'm not doing it." A farmer doesn't get to decide, "You've gotta be kidding me that taking in the harvest is going to require 14 hours per day. No way. Just do half." And an artist doesn't get to say, "Yeah, the film still needs 5 pickup scenes and it hasn't gone to post yet, so just release the rough cut as is. I want my weekends." Wrong careers for certain people. Luckily, there are many other paths to pursue. We must always be true to ourselves.)
That's a good summation of the mentality surrounding a lot of the heat and upset, and I think you're largely correct about the people that tend to voice these arguments being those that are speaking vestigially about it.
Although, it's also not that they're totally wrong! The 80-100 hours per week pulling families apart is exactly what was happening with certain studios. Plus, due directly to the obscene amounts of money flowing from it and the corruption that always results from that, it went on for over a decade. Anyone who tried to challenge it would never be able to afford the litigation. They would be drowned in the army of legal teams that were being handsomely paid by the very mega-corporations that had illegally seized the money the victims had earned for them. (It's the classic story, as old as time itself.)
That abuse, however, is a totally separate thing than the nature of the Arts. Inherently and inevitably, there's going to be a release date, and that date is the make-it-or-break-it for your project, whatever it is. It comes down to this: if the final result does not really speak to people, then all of the months or years of work put into it are going to mean very little in the end. So, that date of release is approaching...what do we do? Do we leave the obvious holes in the work? Or do we all chip in and pull to ensure we fulfill our vision? (I'll repeat, personally, that I have never in my life been involved in a film or stage production that didn't keep people working until 2-3 am on the weekends for at least 2-3 weeks. And we never saw a single cent in return for that extra time. And almost everyone came back for more. [Though it would have been really nice to get some extra pay -- especially when the box office struck it big. ])
The problem is that no one, no one at all, actually said anything like that.
You are making it sound as if working extray days, extra shifts and through whole nights, is the same as a regular 9-5 job. That isn't what's going on here, that isn't what anybody said was happening.
You are misrepresenting the issue, so that it fits the narrative you are selling.
Do you do that because you are a CDPR fanboy or because you don't care how your games are being made, as long as they are being made? I don't know, but either way, your post doesn't at all reflect the reality of the situation, NOR what was people here in the thread were discussing.
For me this thread is sadly just another example of people trying to justify wrong behaviour, because in the end all they care about is getting their games or because they love CDPR and won't accept any criticism, no matter how warranted.
I wrote before that I can see why it is happening and can understand it and it's also clearly not the same when you are actually paid for all the overtime, so that means that what is happening at CDPR is not the worst situation.
Yet it is also not a good situation, when on top of people already working overtime and working through nights, the studio still feels the need to implement mandatory crunch policies, that means adding more stress and pressure on people who already have been working under a lot of stress and pressure for at least this year.
I've worked high pressure jobs, with a lot of hours, but at the worst the crunch was about 2-3 weeks a time, not for basically a whole year and then even more in the last six weeks.
I envy anybody who actually can work under this conditions, without burning out, though I think a lot of people are just talking crap tbh.
I worked in a company a few years ago, in the sales department responsible for worldwide exports, which had been shrunk down from 15 people to five in half a year, with the five of us being expected to do all the work 15 people did before, of course the sales broke down in the first quarter under the new conditions, but only 25% (and still they ripped us a new one for it) and we were able to get out of that minus and even get a small plus at the end of the first year, but everyone of us had worked themselves to the bone.
We all did it under the assumption that the company would change the situation, as long as we were able to keep the ship running as long as it took. Supposedly local branches on the other continents and Eastern Europe were supposed to do sales in their regions, that was the plan.
Yet it never happened and when that became clear, that the situation with all this stress and overtime and pressure wouldn't change, I broke down and two of my colleagues did as well (it took them a little longer), so I know how a job situation like this can wear you down, even when you are paid for overtime and even get nice bonuses. It works for a time, for some longer than others, but most people break at some point.
This is not what happens here. The employer uses his RIGHT to ask his employees to work more and employees use their RIGHT to get payed extra for that, while having their other RIGHTS protected by law.
I don't understand how you can call a basic concept of a company paying people for performing tasks the company needs completed "coercion". It's not coercion, it's called "employment".
However, in the end, every employee/contractor must either do the tasks the employer gives them, during the days the employer mandates, or find a new job. This is the nature of working for someone else.
But it's not "them" -- it's the industry. And if you go back in time 4,000+ years, you'll find that the Ancient Greeks had to "crunch", too, in order to pull off the best theatrical performances they could for the yearly competition. That's part and parcel of the Arts, whether it's on stage, on film, part of some exhibition, or a video game. If you're going to achieve the goal of the Art, it's going require the artists to pull at times.
Those interested in a 9-5 job with a set schedule and plenty of vacation time should very seriously consider another career path.
The "crunch" that created the issue with this is the outright extortion that was happening with certain studios in certain countries once video games started becoming as financially successful (then more financially successful) than Hollywood. We're not talking a month of 6-day weeks...we're talking 80+ hour workweeks as a rule. We're talking outright abuse of workers and workers' rights without the offer of compensation, and the threat of termination and blacklisting if complaints were made. We're talking those same individuals then being summarily terminated anyway and denied not only their bonuses, but often their contracted salaries and severance packages. That's the "crunch" culture that initially started gaining all the attention. (Now, I strongly feel that people are simply latching on to whatever they happen to see that's the same shade of pink and calling it all "salmon".)
But I promise you, no matter how much work is done to avoid "crunch" in the future -- that's not how creative projects work.
And the concept of employment, of course, doesn't at all implies balance of power. Both side are perfectly equals at imposing their point of view, and both sides have as much to lose. That's the reason why employees on the planet whose company respect their country law have nothing to complain about.
As long as the law agree about something, it is always just.
That's why some country didn't ratified Convention No. 154 concerning the Promotion of Collective Bargaining , nor accepted Article 6(4) of the European Social Charter of 1961, nor ratified the Revised European Social Charter of 1996, nor ratified the Collective Complaints Procedure Protocol, (and probably other things) so everything remain perfectly lawful.
I'm not even sure many of them have read the articles. They just read the word crunch and off they went.
I work in civil sector. While it's maybe not fully comparable to the entertainment industry, there are similarities. My work directly or indirectly benefits the people. Now I guess neither the public nor the private sector can, on average, afford to have a huge number of people sit by idly for when critical situations arise. Hardly anyone "over-hires" and then has people sit around or be in 'reserve'. What usually seems to be the case for my branch is that you are rather under-staffed.
I couldn't even think or fathom complaining about crunch in my area. It's usually a regulated office job but when the need arises and you have to finish things or relay things and work some overtime you do that, because you do that for the people in the large end to varying degrees, whether directly or indirectly. This has little to do with "accepting bad practices", it's simply reality as no one over-hires to be like "Well now, this situation arose where we need to focus efforts on finishing this, let's get our reserve employees out of the basement, this will be done in no-time, haha!"
So, are you now arguing that CDPR bad, capitalism bad, having to work bad or something else?
So, are you now arguing that CDPR bad, capitalism bad, having to work bad or something else?
The only rationale I can come up with is it's raising questions in regards to defending practice A, B or C exclusively because it's technically legal (the law isn't naturally infallible).
This:
Appeal to the Law
When following the law is assumed to be the morally correct thing to do, without justification, or when breaking the law is assumed to be the morally wrong thing to do, without justification.www.logicallyfallacious.com