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The Courts Government Entertainment Games News

Interview with EA Attorney 73

Posted by Zonk from the more-from-a-lawyer's-mouth dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Kotaku has an outline of a discussion with one of the attorneys handling the EA case. It has some interesting details, including the fact that if the judgment is in favor of the employees it will likely force the entire game industry, at least in California, to start paying OT and Comp. "Depending on the nature of a positive judgment, other employers with similar job descriptions would most likely be required to start paying their employees by the hour and paying overtime" The article also hints that other game industry cases might be forthcoming."
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Interview with EA Attorney More

Interview with EA Attorney

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  • Poor EA (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dshaw858 ( 828072 )
    I have to admit, I feel kind of sorry for EA. As I've said before [slashdot.org], EA seems to sort of be the scapegoat for all of the world's corporate woes. Sadly, I don't think that this will spur change from the whole industry, but rather imrpove life at EA (as is the point). Unfortunately, I don't think that this type of action will have the same effect at another company for two reasons: first off, they won't have as much press, and secondly it won't be such a novel idea anymore.

    My support still stays with the emplo
    • Wow, Overrated should not be allowed on a post that hasn't received any moderation. That's just abusive.
      • "Wow, Overrated should not be allowed on a post that hasn't received any moderation. That's just abusive."

        Why exactly? I could get a "2" for this comment, however, I will forgo my karma because it is off-topic. I assume you believe that the "overrated" category should only be applied to posts that have been moderated-a reasonable viewpoint but one I don't agree with. Just because you can post at 0, 1 or 2 doesn't mean your comment is worth it...

        And if it is rated as "overrated" it HAS been moderated. Not
        • Why exactly?

          Because, as the Moderation FAQ [slashdot.org] says, Overrated is for a comment that has been moderated out of proportion.

          I assume you believe that the "overrated" category should only be applied to posts that have been moderated-a reasonable viewpoint but one I don't agree with.

          It's not simply that I believe that (I do) but that the admins have explicitly stated that's its purpose. I guess they don't care too much about the abuse potential though, since it's a pretty well known loophole.

          Just because you

          • IMO, and this is just my opinion, I haven't checked the faq, but the Karma bonus is SELF-moderation. you have the option not to use it, I don't by default. I've never used the overrated mod, or redundant for that matter, I try to look for the gems in the rough as the moderation faq recommends and mod them up.
      • overrated mods cannot be judged in meta-mod. Thus, it allows mods to push agendas without losing mod points, which is why overrated/underrated should either be banned or allowed to be judged in meta moderation

    • Re:Poor EA (Score:2, Insightful)

      by cluke ( 30394 )
      One step at a time, my friend. Target the worst abusers first.
    • I am not sorry for EA in this case, gimme a break, forcing people to work for 70hs+ and neither compensating them decently nor stopping this immense crunch time is like hiring them until they cannot work anymore and spitting them out afterwards.

      This is not slavery but close to it. Face it people but everybody who does that just exploits the inexperience of the people they were hiring and doing a pump out and dump scheme, without looking at the health of their employees. Those people deserve a huge smack

  • If they lose, they'll move (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SpinningAround ( 449335 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @08:35PM (#10809752)
    The problem is of course that if the employees succeed but the judgement is enforceable only in California, all the gaming companies will simply move their operations somewhere more condusive to their business practices.

    Which is not to say that the employees shouldn't be pursuing the matter but simply that attempting to change the employer's practices through a state court action might not, in the longer term, have the desired result.

    A second issue is would such a judgement set good precedent that applies to the software industry in California as a whole. It would seem likely that it would have a fairly 'chilling' effect on the development industry in California if it did.

    • Re:If they lose, they'll move (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cliffiecee ( 136220 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @10:27PM (#10810276) Homepage Journal
      I wonder how much of the appeal of an EA job is related to its location... Would an "equal-pay" job (relative to local economy) in, say, Nebraska, Kansas, etc. be as attractive?

      • Re:If they lose, they'll move (Score:4, Insightful)

        by crazyphilman ( 609923 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @05:59AM (#10812007) Journal
        And, since a gaming company has to attract top talent, are they going to be able to convince people to move to Nebraska instead of California? To work seven days a week and almost never see the outside of their sweatshop?

        I'm betting that'd be a "NO".

        • Re:If they lose, they'll move (Score:5, Interesting)

          by mutewinter ( 688449 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @02:04PM (#10813643)
          This is going to be a big boost to non-US gaming producers. They can make great games too so I'm not complaining.

          I think what this means is US gaming companies will have to be more focused and only hire the best of the best. Less games, maybe, just maybe, more quality games (after Daikatana we know name doesn't guarentee shit.)

          People in the gaming industry may be forced to go freelance. Working at home might be nice, but if they thought 70 hour work weeks were bad now they'll need to work 100 hours a week just to compete.

          We've seen several gaming companies go belly-up in this past year. EA is one of the few computer gaming companies that actually seems healthy. Lawsuits raise costs for everyone. If EA hits some unlucky bumps in the road things could get ugly. Maybe in 10 years only Koreans will be making PC games. Lets just hope the end result of this lawsuit is better for all of us.
          • The article I saw a few days ago described working conditions that were truly abysmal... something like 12 hour days, 7 days ago. No one does good work under such conditions. I don't think it would harm productivity AT ALL to require "normal" working hours. Maybe then management would have to think about what they were doing, instead of just whipping the slaves harder.

  • Fine With Me (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Saturday November 13, 2004 @08:50PM (#10809817) Homepage
    I don't see a problem with this. If you force your programmers to work up to 12+ hours a day 7 days a week and won't give them any ovetime or compensation, you're exploiting them (unless you specifically told them that would be their hours). No one should be expected to have to work those kind of hours when they only signed up for "normal" days with "occasional" overtime.

    I assume that EA will complain about having to do that to compete or something like that ("We can't higher more because it's too expensive!"), but that doesn't bother me either. Sure programmers in SanFran or the Valley or LA are expesive, but a big part of that is because they have to be able to afford those exorbitantly expensive homes there. If they would create a division outside of Madison, WI or Wichita, KS or some other nice city with more reasonable housing prices they wouldn't have to pay programmers so much. "In-source" to rural America (I saw an article about it the other day). When a small house costs 100-200k and not 1-2m, you don't have to pay your programmers nearly as much for the same standard of living. In fact, you can pay them less, and they can still have a BETTER standard of living. And it's not like a programming team can't be located anywhere. Surf instructors may not be able to do their job in Kansas (relative to CA), but a programmer's location doesn't matter that much.

    It's one thing if EA specifically told employees the kind of hours they'd be working, but it sounds like they didn't, which is basically exploitation to me. Sorry, they sound guilty and this sounds like a good thing.

    Of course, I'm not a big fan of EA in the first place. Just FYI.

    • As someone who has been "planning" to break into the game industry for the last 3 years of his University program... I have to say that I thought it was common knowledge that game developers would be put to a great deal of work with little compensation other than to simply create a good game.

      I mean, I know that myself, as well as like minded people would probably be willing to work insane hours at minimum wage if it meant that we got to create some worthy games.

      I am not really a big fan of EA either,

      • Re:Fine With Me (Score:5, Insightful)

        by blincoln ( 592401 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @09:17PM (#10809959) Homepage Journal
        I mean, I know that myself, as well as like minded people would probably be willing to work insane hours at minimum wage if it meant that we got to create some worthy games.

        It's easy to think that until you have to actually do it day in and out for several years.

        I *love* computers. I'm 26, so when I was a kid not everyone had one, but my dad thought ahead and got us an Apple IIe, and I've been hooked ever since.

        I've been working in IT for the last six years. At one of my positions I ended up working an 80 hour week after a couple of 60-70 hour weeks. After that I had to take a week off (on the company's dime), because I was about ready to quit and never work in the industry again.

        I cannot imagine what it's like for people who do it on a regular basis. People need time to do other things. I don't care how much money I'm making if I don't have time to take ninjutsu classes, play paintball or videogames, go to clubs, or whatever. It's just not worth it, and it *will* burn people out sooner or later no matter how much they love what they're working on.

        • Re:Fine With Me (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Polarism ( 736984 )
          I pull 60 hour workweeks twice a month now, and did it for 2 years (feb 02-feb 04), only this time it's only temporary for a few months.

          It can really mess you up, because you end up simplifying your life down to work/eat/sleep for most of that week, and almost nothing else because of the exhaustion (what I did for those 2 years was extremely extremely extremely mentally intensive, to the point of actually "working very hard" for a good 8-10 hours out of each 12 hour shift). It's offset by a 24 hour week t
          • Here's the joke, you're not making 200k at EA. Because your job is desired within the geek community ("I wanna make games for a living!") you get the benefit of a lower salary and longer workdays. Of course, this doesn't sit well with family minded individuals, which is part of why they're shooting for 75 percent college grads.

        • Re:Fine With Me (Score:3, Interesting)

          by crazyphilman ( 609923 )
          A similar thing happened to me. I was assigned as the lead programmer (actually, I ended up being the only programmer) on a fairly important project. The project manager promised the client we would produce everything by a specific drop-dead date, then spun his wheels for SIX MONTHS in user meetings, not wrapping up the spec until about a month or two before the drop-dead date. By the time he got done fooling around, I had a month to get it done.

          I worked 16 hours a day, almost every single day, for about t
      • I am not in the game industry, but expect crunch times from time to time, but what EA did was to make crunch times the norm. The problem with that attitude is that you basically run your people into the ground that way, and the work generally suffers from that.

        Sorry to say that but having to work 7 days a week in a 12-14 hours work cycle, even the strongest person is brain fried after a few years that way and has to drop out of comp sci totally.

        I dont think the gaming industry is that much different t

    • Many companies already have. there are at least 3 gaming studios in the outskirts of St.Louis, MO, one of them is owned by TakeTwo, another by Sony. Artists live confortably with less than 50K a year. Programming rates are 10-30K higher, but still way cheaper than what I'd cost to employ the same people in the bay area.

      • As someone who lives just ouside St. Louis, Mo that did not know this I would like to know more. do you by chance have anymore details, or at least websites you could point me at.
        Thanks

        Mycroft

        • Hi, from Brentwood! *wave!*

          Anyway, I think it's Gathering of Developers and/or PopTop that are here. Take a look at this site [godgames.com] -- I'm pretty sure that's them, although I haven't looked for a while.

        • As the other poster said, Poptop is one them. They are based in Fenton and are working on a turn based wargame. Unless something has happened to them in the last few months, Sonly Online Entertainment had a team in Lake St.Louis. They made Planetside, the not-so-succesfull FPS. There is at least one small company making protable games, but I can't recall the details (friend of a friend kind of thing).

          Considering how well the St.Louis market is going for business programming, I'd not go work for any of thos

    • It's one thing if EA specifically told employees the kind of hours they'd be working, but it sounds like they didn't, which is basically exploitation to me. Sorry, they sound guilty and this sounds like a good thing.

      Yeah if EA can't afford to pay overtime they should just offer less money to begin with. As long as things go to schedule EA wouldn't be paying out any more than they would normally, and employees should get a break if crunch time goes from an expected few months to a year or two ("Hey everyo

    • OR-E-GON... Seriously, we are the digital forest that can be afforded! We go by the basic rule of thumb that living expenses(cars house etc) is 1/2 of California... When a damn nice house can be had for 200-300k(350K/400k being the upperclass of virtually every community in the entire state).

      It really is a fraction the cost of 'comparable' homes from the first hand accounts I have heard... Plus, we have Panic (mac shareware) Intel and OSDL(the org that pays Linus his check every month), among others. :)

    • Re:Fine With Me (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DrSkwid ( 118965 )
      work up to 12+ hours a day 7 days a week ...
      unless you specifically told them that would be their hours

      Here in Europe, you could sue them the moment you signed the contract, got to love the maximum work hours laws :)

    • EA just *shut down* its studios in places like Austin Texas and moved them to california.
    • In fact, you can pay them less, and they can still have a BETTER standard of living. And it's not like a programming team can't be located anywhere. Surf instructors may not be able to do their job in Kansas (relative to CA), but a programmer's location doesn't matter that much.

      The programmer's location may not matter to the programmer's company, but it sure does to the programmer and the programmer's family! There's nothing like raising your children in a homogenous, all-white society, such as you'd

  • Great (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This could mean that the race for producing games at the cheapest cost possible will either slow down (good) or that the incredibly greedy suits as EA will start to outsource to india (bad).
  • Or worse the companies in general will just outsource to some place like China or India...
    • Already happening. I played a game (don't want to get sued, not gonna name it) about a year ago, which had wonderful level design and art, but which would crash to a blue screen (in Windows 2000!) with a cryptic error message on a random basis. I asked a friend of mine who used to do Visual C++ what he thought might be going on and he said they were probably coding to the older Windows API, doing Windows 98 stuff. Windows 2000 is based on NT, and some of the older games choke on it. But this game was suppos
  • As an employee of a video game publisher, who works in the studio side, and who does not feel exploited, I hope EA wins.

    And I HATE EA.

    • Re:Well (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Why do you hope EA wins?
      • thats stupid.. think of the money+bonus+shares that the CEO earns.. its should be more fair
      • If the whole industry is forced to change how positions are defined, due to the alleged actions of only one member, the consequences to the industry cannot be predicted. My company does not treat me like the EA employees allege that they are treated. However, I am covered under the artistic/self-managed/studio side and am considered an exempt employee. They pay me a certain amount of money to get a certain job done, not by how many hours I work. I happen to like this situation. If my position, and thos

  • Game Industry Work Conditions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by putko ( 753330 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @01:39AM (#10811225) Homepage Journal
    I worked for a company founded by some EA guys, and also for another electronic entertainment company (run by non-EA people); I know something about this industry.

    When I got hired, they were always upfront about the killer hours. I agreed to them because I wanted the work. I didn't do it for money: I wanted to do the job.

    I worked 2 weeks straight (didn't go home) at one place; this was OK with me. I worked 3 weeks straight at another place. All voluntary.

    The company was amazing to me because of the tolerance of all kinds of oddities -- as long as we were on schedule. This was in contrast to other environments that were less productivity oriented, where dress and hours were regulated. This matters: in one environment, you don't have nerf fights and your pay and hours are constant, regardless of productivity. In another, you have fun, but you take the schedule risk.

    If I was a manager and people started talking "comp time" and "exempt", I'd point out: no dress code, no fixed hours -- just deliver the results when you said you would -- or quit, please, so that the rest of us can get on with the project.

    Really, if you want comp time and overtime, you'd better get a job at the Post Office or in a Detroit-area auto manufacturer. Working in games? Negotiate your pay as if you'll be working 12 hours, seven days a week when you are behind schedule.

    Personally, if there is going to be a lawsuit, why not one over the mental suffering caused when the publisher kills your title, and you see that a year or more of your work is worthless? That's got to be one of the most devastating work experiences I've ever had -- not the long hours.
    • Working in games? Negotiate your pay as if you'll be working 12 hours, seven days a week when you are behind schedule.

      Except the problem is that it seemed EA was expecting its employees to work 12 hour days 7 days a week even when they WEREN'T behind schedule... I think their argument that other game companies will also have to pay overtime isn't all that valid. Everyone expects some crunch time. That's a basic part of game development. The problem comes when the crunch schedule is considered the norm all
      • EA was not expecting people to work those hours when not on schedule.

        EA is demanding those hours to stay on shcedule. The schedule is essentially set up to assume those brutal hours from the start, from what I understand of the situation.

        END COMMUNICATION
    • Well I worked for two very large game companies, one founded by ex-EA members and one not... And I think you're wrong.

      If you're sleeping at the office to hit your milestones (something I did for six titles straight), it's a sign that your schedules are completely fricken off. If you work 12 hours a day on a project for two years, that means the game actually took three years to make but they only paid you for two.

      Don't get me wrong, half the time it is the developer's fault for lacking discipline (fea

    • While game developers are not exactly suffering the worst possible lives, they are in a case where the work is popular and so many employers treat them poorly. This is why unions arose in the first place-- when there is a labor surplus, in a free market employers can drive down wages and working conditions.

      First, People with lousy jobs can always quit and find other jobs. That isn't a reason that they should, however. I think that people should be fairly compensated for what they contribute to a compan

  • That's why... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by H0NGK0NGPH00EY ( 210370 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @02:14AM (#10811326) Homepage
    Which is exactly why EA will do everything in their power to end the case with an out of court settlement. Note to those suing EA: Please, don't settle! Take it all the way.
  • If EA loses, their profit margins will shrink, or they will cut costs, reducing quality of games, or increase prices, to recoup the "lost profit". As a gamer, I dont want to see prices go up (or quality go down), but as a future possible employee of EA, I want to see the employees win. In the end I think that people should get what is right, and EA should start paying. But it looks like Management at EA would be quite a sweet job. Maybe I should switch majors...
    • How can you guarnatee that profits will shrink?
      If they pay fairly, but work the devs fairly, they'll pay 40 people for 40-50 hrs of work a week, instead of 40 people the same for 80-100 hrs a week, but you can guarantee that the dev's will work better, get more done and in general be happier. more hours != more work. Bad press would really be the only source of profit loss.
    • EA reducing the quality of their games? Is that even possible?

      This is the company that pioneered selling new editions of the same sports game every year. EA used to be pretty cool, back in the 8-bit days, but these days, they sure ain't no Nintendo.

  • EA was screwing those folks. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Banner ( 17158 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @05:22AM (#10811928) Journal
    Amateurs give their work away. Professionals get paid for it. If you're working overtime, especially lots of it, and you're not getting paid or comped for it, you're not a professional, you're an amateur.

    Look at your bosses, the board, the executives, are they working for free? No, of course not, if they're working more than 40 a week, you can be sure they are getting compensated. I've been in the industry for over 2 decades now and I have learned that if you're not getting paid for your overtime, you are going to get F***'d bigtime. If they are promising you comp time, but don't put it in writing, you'll never see it. Same with ANY promises of ANY kind of payoff later on, unless it's in writing (and even then count your fingers after shaking hands) you won't see it.

    In short, people who regularly make you work over 40 and don't pay you for it are SCUM. They're ripping you off, and they know it. I've worked on some of the most 'gee-whiz' crap ever to come out of DOD or private industry. They never asked us to work 'killer hours' without paying us. Why? Cause people who work 'killer hours' are less productive than those who work only 40. And after two plus decades in high tech, I can say that's definitely true.

    • The worst part about this whole thing is that EA could have easily avoided it all. How? By paying their employees like professionals.

      Ok, so it sounds a little crazy, but if you want to make your employees "exempt", it's really pretty simple to do. Just pay them enough! In California, that's just a little over $80k per year. Make 'em salaried, and if they're programmers or other IT folk, $80k+ per year, and you can ask them to work all you frickin' want. No overtime. They're in charge of their schedules, mor

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