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EA Faced With Another Employee Lawsuit 139

Posted by Zonk from the getting-old dept.
GamesIndustry.biz has the news that EA has been slapped with another employee-filed lawsuit. He's part of the engineering staff, and feels unfairly targeted by the "creative staff" laws in CA. From the article: "...in the midst of a storm of unwanted publicity about EA's employment practices, and provoked a response from the firm's vice president of human resources, Rusty Reuff, who admitted that 'as much as I don't like what's been said about our company and our industry, I recognize that at the heart of the matter is a core truth.'"
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EA Faced With Another Employee Lawsuit More

EA Faced With Another Employee Lawsuit

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  • surprised? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tim256 ( 855256 )
    I personally think overtime is an issue you should take up with your superviser. If you won't get paid for overtime, then you should be able to simply not work it. Aren't engineers usually salaried workers anyways?

    Anyways EA has 4400 employees worldwide, so I'm not suprised they have disputes every now an then.

    • Salaries... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Aren't engineers usually salaried workers anyways?"

      yeah, so picture this scenario: You're interviewing for the job position. They want to hire you and you negotiate your salary. Let's say you're used to making $35/hr. You do the math, and figure that 40hr/wk x $35 = $1400. Boils down to about $72,800 /yr.

      You figure that based on your experience, you may deserve more than that, but the living expenses aren't as high as at your old job, and you really want in on the games industry (and besides, the company

    • Re:surprised? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Xentor ( 600436 )
      Sure... Go ahead. Don't work overtime. You get "downsized" to make room for someone who will...

      It sucks, but that's life.

      • Re:surprised? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Downsizing is a layoff. When you replace somebody, that means you fired them. Firing somebody for not working unpaid overtime is illegal in most states. The way you punish workers who don't kick in extra hours is by witholding raises and bonuses. After a couple years of never getting anything more, most employees get the hint and move on. If not, just monitor their Internet use. Odds are that sooner or later they'll reveal a trade secret or surf for pr0n or something like that.
    • You appear to not realize what salary means. Salary means you work however many hours you need to in order to get the job done, be that 20 or 60.

      A salaried employee neither gets overtime nor gets docked for idle time. That's the nature of salary.

  • If the EA suits were paying ANY attention at all.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Moryath ( 553296 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2005 @01:20PM (#11745869)
    they'd have realized by now that forcing the employees to work such long hours is part of the reason that their games are all complete crap.

    Face it. After someone's been awake for more than 24 hours straight, their reaction time and mental abilities are worse off than if they had a 1.1 blood-alcohol content.

    Force your employees where their sleep debt over the course of a week is above 24 hours, and imagine what you've got.

    EA should take the hint. The gamers are getting tired of crappy games, the programmers can't program like that. Cut the crap on the programmers, let them get some decent rest, and your games will turn out better because they won't spend 90% of their time fixing all the bugs that were created because people were too fucking tired to code correctly.
    • But when a new verson of Madden Football comes out, most gamers with jobs end up going more than 24 hours without sleep, too. Seems to me that all QA should be done by sleep-depraved zombies, to simulate real-world conditions.
    • >their reaction time and mental abilities are worse off than if they had a 1.1 blood-alcohol content.

      I disagree.

      Most people are comatose / dead when they have anything near a .40 BAC.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2005 @03:00PM (#11747103)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • The Sims, the best-selling game ever, is "complete crap"?

        • The first one, no... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Moryath ( 553296 )
          the rest of them are all the kind of stuff EA does - boring, same old same old creations.

          I don't give a shit about Madden now being the only "official" NFL game, if they can come back and actually make it worth playing, maybe I'll buy the next one. If not, I'll happily go right back to playing Tecmo Bowl.

          Face it. EA does two things: rushed-out crappy mission packs/expansions, and rushed-out crappy football games that are exactly the same crappy gameplay as last year's but with the new year's roster and 10
          • Ah...so complete crap includes the Medal of Honor games? The Command & Conquer games? The SSX games? The FIFA games? The Need for Speed games? The Burnout games? The Battlefield 1942 games?

            I'm having a difficult time spotting the crap amidst all these highly acclaimed titles. Perhaps you're looking at a different list than I?

            BTW, Two Towers and Return of the King were both fine games that god pretty much solidly good reviews...Could they have been better with more time? Probably (true of prett
            • #1 - Medal of Honor: The Same Game, Over And Fucking Over Again. After the first one, it's a bunch of fucking mission packs. See my previous complaint about EA.

              Not done by EA either, done by various studios and the EA logo slapped on the side of the box.

              #2 - Command & Conquer: a series that steadily went downhill, as Westwood just died.

              #3 - SSX... sssnnnoooozzzeeee

              #4 - FIFA: see NFL For Europe. Same Shit, Different Year.

              #5 - Need for Speed: driving games ceased to amuse me after Pole Position II. I
              • Just would like to point out that the C&C generals games are considered to be among the best of the franchise, according to C&C fansites and hardcore C&C players, not just the gaming press. I also personally thought it was an excellent game, very well balanced and fun multiplayer.
              • I continue to fail to see why you seem to want sometimes separate EA from various studios that it has bought, and at other times don't. You can't have it both ways. Either EA had some part in making them, or didn't.

                #1 & 2, I actually agree with.
                But all the others are just you expressing your opinion of certain types of games. Just because you say something sucks, doesn't mean it actually does...lol. Especially to the hundreds of thousands of people that will disagree with you. You have to separate
            • Er... I don't know about the other games in that list, but the Command & Conquer series was made by Westwood Studios, which was bought out by EA... after the buyout the games did indeed suck...
              • That's been one of points all along. People say "oh EA makes all these games that suck", most of which were either contracted out to independent studios, or were independent studio's pitches that EA bought.

                And then everyone turns around and says again "oh, but these games were good and they weren't made by EA". Like C&C as you mention...

                So which is it? Either you give EA credit for the games it has published (which you must at the very least from a publishing standpoint) and EA's games are bad or g
        • I'll bite. Why the fuck does The Sims require that you run as Administrator in Windows?
    • Force your employees where their sleep debt over the course of a week is above 24 hours, and imagine what you've got.

      Um, a doctor?

      DT

  • The Saddest Part (Score:3, Interesting)

    by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2005 @01:25PM (#11745914)
    The saddest part is that EA games is a publisher, not even the development powerhouse it used to be. It makes literally ONLY EA-sports games. 9 out of 10 of the other games are acquired via merger or buy outs.

    For a company that has 5000 employees and engineer only 5 sports title a year, basketball football hockey baseball nascar. All EA does is hire $400,000 salary lawyers to slap EA logos on other company's work.

    • I don't quite follow.

      EA has plenty of subsidiaries who continue to develop games.

      Maxis was aquired by EA in 1997. When Maxis develops a game, it means that EA is developing a game.

    • Re:The Saddest Part (Score:5, Informative)

      by Alban ( 86010 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2005 @02:35PM (#11746754)
      SSX
      Def Jam
      Need for Speed
      The sims
      Medal of Honor (for better or for worse)
      Command and Conquer
      LotR RPG
      LotR RTS
      LotR hack'n'slash (two towers + rotk)
      Goldeneye
      Harry Potter
      Nascaar racing

      to name just a few, are all sports games and are all developped internally at EA.

      As for 5 sports games a year, your count is quite inexact (btw the 'street' games are totally different from their 'serious' counterpart, both from gameplay and art perspectives - you should try them and stop talking out of your ass):

      - Madden
      - FIFA
      - NBA
      - MVP
      - Fight Night
      - Tiger Woods Golf
      - NHL
      - FIFA Street
      - NBA Street (if you haven't tried vol'3 you are missing something)
      - NFL Street

      • Re:The Saddest Part (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Aeron65432 ( 805385 )
        Well to be completely fair to the other person, let's establish that several of these games are not made from the ground up. EA just has to either buy someone else's engine, or tweak an old game a bit.

        Take Medal of Honor, for example. They bought the Quake II engine and just made a single-player.

        Same with several of their sports games. They don't create a whole new game-engine, they just rehash it with new rosters, and people buy it.

        • Although I don't know for a fact that MoH is not built on quake2, I would be surprised since this would imply that the quake2 engine has been ported to gamecube and playstation 2. While not impossible, what's the point in buying an engine for a PC and then have to port to to consoles (and porting it to ps2 would be way more painful then gc).

          As for the sports games, they have been built from the ground up at some point, so the company would still diserve the credit. :) Also, if you look at FIFA 2002 (Which
        • It was actually the Quake 3 Arena engine, IIRC. (Which you probably knew, since you mentioned them making it single-player focued.)

          Something important to note though is that many Medal of Honor games don't use that engine - both the originals on the PS1 and very latest versions use various custom engines.
      • NBA Street (if you haven't tried vol'3 you are missing something)

        You couldn't link to a torrent for the Xbox ISO or something?? :P

        The only game EA has released that I have enjoyed since Battlefield 1942 is Burnout 3. The Sega ESPN games are way better sports games.

    • omg, where to even begin with all the misconceptions and outright falsities.

      1) They don't make only EA-Sports games. That's just flat out incorrect.

      2) 9 out of 10 game are not even remotely "acquired via merger or buy outs"...that's so ridiculous I don't even know what to say. Do you understand the concept of developers and publishers?

      3) They make a few more than 5 sports titles a year.

      4) As for the last sentence, I'm not even going to bother. See #3.

  • Employers Need to Be Smart (Score:3, Insightful)

    by computertheque ( 823940 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2005 @01:29PM (#11745965)
    There simply needs to be a point when people will stop accepting what has been going on in this industry.

    Just because it seems that crunch sessions are always some part of a development cycle does not mean that it should be accepted. If anything, the continuous nature of it should lead to methods of prevention, such as allowing for a longer development time.
    • Allowing for longer development time is a great option -- if you want to go out of business fast. In the real world, you miss the holiday season and you are screwed. Nobody likes games with graphics that are even slightly behind the state of the art, so you have to stay on schedule. There have been lots of great games that flopped simply because they were released a couple of months too late.

      In any case, this is a management problem. Avoiding this problem is how good managers earn their salary. Unfort
      • Not really. Maybe for some small-time people starting up with their first game.

        But I honestly doubt anyone was so pissed off about Gran Turismo 4 being delayed until today to be released (I await the UPS man currently) that people won't still buy the damn game. They want it, they will get it, whenever it comes.

        Duke Nuken Forever will fly off the shelves, if/when it ever gets released.
        • Duke Nuken Forever will fly off the shelves, if/when it ever gets released.

          Yeah, just like Daikatana is flying off the shelves right now.
          • Duke Nukem Forver and Daikatana cannot be compared.

            DNF is a franchise sequel. Daikatana was not.

            Whatever the hype machine may say, you already know what DNF will be like, while nobody had a clue what Daikatana would be like.
        • There are very few franchises/studios that can afford being late. The ones I know of: gran turismo, any blizzard game, any id software game, that's pretty much it. These games could come out just about anytime and still sell like crazy. But those studios put out one game every 3-4 years.

          But even franchises like grand theft auto stick to their release dates pretty well.

          Otherwise, pretty much everyone else has to stick to their contract with their publisher. There are often penalties for not reaching milest
          • Actually most Rockstar games take quite a while longer than expected. How long has their Warriors game been in development?

            Most franchises can afford to be late. Only in the sports genre do many players actually care that much about how late the game is. If they like the franchise and the new game is decent, they are going to grab the game no matter when it comes out. (The only exception is when too many other games come out at once, of course - so many of the 'on-time' games last year actually suffered si

      • Re:Employers Need to Be Smart (Score:5, Informative)

        by Phisbut ( 761268 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2005 @03:06PM (#11747186)
        In the real world, you miss the holiday season and you are screwed.

        Year after year, the holiday season seems to comer earlier. Companies always want to get their product out before their competitor, so now, 'holiday season' begins in september.

        Quoting Gabe from Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com] :

        What in the hell is wrong with the videogame industry? If they spread these games out over the course of a year I'd probably buy every one of them. As it stands now, I'll end up having to rent 90% of these.

        In the movie industry you have a few big summer blockbusters, but decent movies come out year round. Imagine if every single movie worth watching came out in July. Imagine if you had to spend five hundred dollars in one month just to see the movies you were interested in. People wouldn't stand for that. Why is it that the videogame industry is able to get away with this bullshit?

        I'm not even talking about October and November here. 99% of all the games worth playing in a given year come out in the space of three months. THAT IS F***ING RIDICULOUS!

      • One example going against your theory: Blizzard.

        They have multiple times released games at times other than near the holidays and have multiple times released games that had "graphics that are even slightly behind the state of the art" (Diablo 2 was 640x480)

        In any case, with that aside, I completely agree this is a management problem. It's a scheduling problem, cut and dry...
        • Well, no shit. Blizzard is a famous developer. They have never had a game that flopped. They have a reputation for high-quality games, so people buy them.

          A publisher like EA that relies largely on shovelware cannot afford to miss the holiday season, crap game or not. Even the crappiest game with a famous license will sell well come holiday season, since people give them as gifts.
          • 1) Right. So you made a claim, and I gave a counter-example, and you agree...? Besides, don't you think that if many game companies were allowed the same amount of time that Blizzard allows for their games that their games could be much better as well?

            2) "shovelware"?...hm, out of curiousity what games do you consider shovelware?
      • Nobody likes games with graphics that are even slightly behind the state of the art, so you have to stay on schedule.

        Bullshit. Absolutely huge amounts of games are successful without truly state of the art graphics - in fact nearly every successful game fits into that category.

        Hell, how would games on systems like the GBA or PS2 even sell anymore otherwise?
    • Hey, if you are a good enough programmer to get a job at EA, and don't like the treatment, go work for a bank or an insurance company or a med-tech company or something. They will pay you more and work you less. You lose the "sexy" ability to say you make computer games for a living, but that's the trade off.

      Seriously. I work for a medical software company in the midwest, and we get phat recruiting bonuses for finding reliable new hires. If you are an EA programmer who thinks he's getting the shaft, le

  • Employment Opportunities! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22, 2005 @01:33PM (#11746018)
    I work at EA and can (anonymously, at least) vouch for claims like this. After the first wave of lawsuits and the EASpouse publicity, EA immediately set out with an attempted rectification of thier employment practices by distributing an employee satisfaction survey and openly claiming about thier search for ways to reward hard working employees.
    I can't say they aren't actually trying to end this negative situation, but it's obvious from our point of view that they're attempts are fueled by the desire to quell the bad press and save face, as opposed to actually compensating overworked employees and resolving the issues.
    Obviously the company sees the issue differently than the press and public, and is trying to rectify issues for the wrong reasons. (i.e. Cure bad press, not employee hardship). I believe they will only put forth the effort enough to stop thier people from complaining publicly, before returning to the tyrancy and money-mongering.

    • Re:Employment Opportunities! (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Bad press is the only problem here. If your job is such a hardship, go work for somebody else.

      Most other software companies are nicer to their programmers than most computer game companies.

      And if you absolutely must design games for a living, then keep in mind that there a lot more geeks trying to get into your industry than most others, so you are going to have to work a lot harder to set yourself apart. That's just the way it is. Not everybody listened to their guidance counselor's B.S. about looking

    • "If your job is such a hardship, go work for somebody else."

      I guess its the American way (lazy) to tuck your tail between your legs and move on to the next job, so to speak?

      Whatever happend to fighting for what's right or fighting for a cause that you believe in? Why does everyone just give-up now a days? Because you are one person versus a large corporation? Maybe I'm too inspired by all these super-hero movies that have been coming out of the years... Or just naive. lol

      • You're too naive (no offense). People have bills and mortgages to pay and mouths to feed (theirs and their families). There are also those who don't want to lead and face the risks, because they're satisfied with following those who do.

        Your spirit is what starts companies like EA (believe it or not): the drive to change the status quo and bring something new and interesting to the market. Sometimes those companies lose the vision (also like EA), and sometimes those companies go under (Black Isles)... an
    • I'm willing to bet someone sat down, and ran the numbers to see which would cost more, paying off the workers to keep working late to placate them, or to actually solve the problem of them working overtime.

      Guess which ended up costing them less money.

  • Part of the problem (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DrZombie ( 817644 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2005 @01:36PM (#11746049)
    One of the biggest problems in the software industry, speaking as someone who's been here for a modest amount of time (6 years, since my sophomore year of college, full-time), is that management sets unrealistic timelines. If more upstream design was done (sorry, reading Code Complete for the 2nd time) then they could develop more realistic schedules. Enough with the 90% floating requirements, enough late-schedule additions. Engineer for quality from inception, and they could come out with better games on realistic schedules with happy, healthy employees who will be a value added in the sheer amount of innovation they can bring to the table when all aspects of their lives are balanced (for some, this is an impossibility, and businesses take advantage of this neurotic behavior, which I think is unethical).

    • Re:Part of the problem (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jbolden ( 176878 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2005 @05:42PM (#11749255) Homepage
      There is a myth that corporate America does a good job using resources. Most companies are a waste of this nation's economic capital, and have terrible rates of return (when the earnings statements are looked at either long term or with a sceptical eye since fraud is now a major problem). In the 1960s when companies were far less concerned about getting the most out of each employee but rather built institutional structures to create productivity large business was so effective that there was a great deal of fear that small business wouldn't exist at all. And that's with employees having 2 hour lunches where they drank and an 8 hour work day. Today the structures aren't in place everyone works 60 hours a week and gets and gets nothing done.
      • I'd have mod you up had I had the points, instead I find myself replying. Given that many (if not most) of business in the world are looking towards America for leadership, it'll be interesting to see where this is heading. Europe may perhaps be behind in productivity due to socialist labor protection, but the US is arguably too far on the other end of the spectrum.

    • Re:Part of the problem (Score:4, Informative)

      by Psychochild ( 64124 ) <psychochild.gmail@com> on Thursday February 24, 2005 @02:53AM (#11763947) Homepage
      There's a further problem in the games industry in that you can't really schedule for "fun". We're still trying to understand this mysterious beast from a logical point of view. Or, to put it another way, there's no test harness for "fun factor". You can plan out the game with a high degree of detail, implement everything on schedule and under budget, but if the game isn't fun it doesn't matter. Yet, the money people hate to think that all that work went for nothing, so they usually want a game to ship by the deadline no matter what state it's in. That's why you sometimes see games that are absolutely unplayable and obviously not finished; the developers weren't able to get the game to a "fun" state before the money dried up.

      This gets worse when you have business people willing to exploit the eagerness of people developing games. I eagerly worked 60-80 hours at 3DO working on one project I enjoyed (the project I bought from 3DO after they closed it down, Meridian 59 [meridian59.com]), but I hated working even 50 hour weeks on another game that only had a 6 month development cycle. Usually the managers just say, "Hey, you're making games. Suck it up and have fun!" if you complain about the hours. It doesn't help that many people have a completely misguided idea of what it's like to make games (even without the bullshit you have to tolerate at large companies); they don't realize that making games is different than playing games.

      Enough of a rant for now. Some thoughts from someone who has seen the inside of the beast.

      Have fun,
  • ...this is really something that is ripe for legistation to deal with esspecially because its legistation that has caused the problem in the first place. The only reason this stuff has come up is because laws exist that allow EA and other companies to deny overtime.
    I have not seen overtime where I work since the bubble burst. Before that they did give it to me and others who by law they didn't have to; however they had exemptions in out company policy (which still exist) which allowed for overtime on critical approved projects. Since the bubble burst those exemptions never get invoked. Its really to bad because pervious to the change I would regualrly work 55 hour weeks (I unfortunately couldn't collect overtime until 50 hours because of my pay status) Now I go home at 40 since on my pay scale thats the minum number of hours.
    • I am slightly confused by this since I apparently come from another planet, or at least another continent.

      Why ON EARTH is there a law that explicitly denies employees rights? The sensible approach would be to let this to be covered in contracts and use legislation to explicitly requlate overtime for those below a certain salary, as they supposedly have a weaker negotiation position?

      What have I missed?

      • California has some kind of law that says various entertainer professions are exempt from getting overtime wages (there are other limitations, obviously - you need to be making a pretty high salary, for one). Those are the laws EA is taking advantage of. But their usage of them is pretty questionable - it is clear many of their employees simply don't qualify.
    • It[']s really to bad because pervious to the change I would regualrly work 55 hour weeks

      If this is yuor atenshion too detale when back down to fourty huors, mayb 55 was a mistaik?

      Not normally one for being a spelling/grammar Nazi but it has validity in the midst of a discussion about how long hours effect accuracy.
      • I type to fast, am dyslexic, and Slashdot doesn't have an integrated spellchecker...so sue me...
        • I type to fast, am dyslexic, and Slashdot doesn't have an integrated spellchecker...so sue me...

          Most compilers don't come with spell checkers either - beyond basic syntax validity checking. Even fewer catch when you do the equivalent of misusing to/too - typoing on to an similar but different term.

          Programming, more than most other careers requires a serious degree of accuracy and attention to detail. Sure, you can code messily and debug later but you'll end up with a lot of bugs slipping through.

          Would I
          • I think you have reached a little beyond what I ment with the response. When I am dashing off a comment on Slashdot if I miss a word or two who cares people still get the point. When I am coding its an entirely different story. I don't dash off code like I do prose.

            Coding is an entirely different mind set where each word/character requires methodical careful logical thought as it is entered.

            Anyway I agree with your further point. Infact thats what I was orginally getting at in most original post. Over

  • You got that right... (Score:5, Funny)

    by tc ( 93768 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2005 @01:39PM (#11746085)
    Best quote from the article:

    Their case argues that EA's engineers "do not perform work that is original or creative,"

    EA games have no orignality or creativity? Say it ain't so!
  • ...for being greedy immoral bastards, that's business. its OUR fault because we're the spineless consumers who keep buying their shit while bitching about it over and over and over. either get some balls and don't buy the 'latest & greatest' copy of last years garbage regurgitated or stop complaining that they put out shit all the time. you're feeding the system and they have NO REASON TO CHANGE. personally i don't buy any sports title whatsoever, and also avoid EA games like the plague, until eithe

  • $91840 salary + overtime? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JavaLord ( 680960 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2005 @01:51PM (#11746211) Journal
    If you read the article, you can see that the law they are trying to dispute is only applied to programmers who make $41 an hour or more. If you add that up, it means these programmers make at least $91,840 a year.

    Now if you are a programmer, (I am) I'm sure you work some overtime during crunch time. Do you get overtime for it? I know I don't, it's expected that I work until the job is done. Do you make $91,840? I don't think too many programmers are making 91k nowadays.
    • Your calculations are all good, and I'd sure like to make 90k a year even if I have to do some crunch time. But taking reference the EASpouse post, at EA your talking crunch time over crunch time over more crunch time, you can't even take a 3-day weekend to relax from your last crunch because your starting another crunch on monday.

      So like someone else said before 90k a year for 60-70 hours a week does not equal 41$ / hour
    • first, i'd like to question your math. 41 * 40 * 52 is $85280 ( unless you're assuming there are 56 weeks in a year) Yes, that's still a lot of money, but when you consider things like the 85 hour weeks they require during crunchtimes (link below) and all of the sudden it doesn't seem so good anymore.
      http://games.slashdot.org/games/04/11/11/0031259.s html?tid=98&tid=10/ [slashdot.org]

    • I don't think too many programmers are making 91k nowadays.

      I believe you're right, but not for the reason you allude. In my experience, most programmers don't make that much because they are 1) young and 2) inexperienced.

      By 'inexperienced', I mean they don't know how to negotiate salary properly. These are probably the same people who buy Saturns for their "no price negotiation" policy. Contrast that with my last position, where it took about three days to negotiate the final compensation ($$ + benes).

    • > Now if you are a programmer, (I am) I'm sure you work some overtime during crunch time. Do you get overtime for it? I know I don't, it's expected that I work until the job is done. Do you make $91,840? I don't think too many programmers are making 91k nowadays.

      <snippy_answers>
      I am too. Yes I do. Yes I do. I'm sorry. No, I make more. I think you're looking in the wrong place.
      </snippy_answers>

      Seriously, there are actually good, well-paying programming jobs out there at companies
      • ...and when you have a steady supply of cheap, inexperienced, eager laborers, how do you think the company's going to handle it?

        So how you treat people doesn't matter, as long as they're willing to put up with it? Abuse is OK so long as nobody complains?

        • > So how you treat people doesn't matter, as long as they're willing to put up with it? Abuse is OK so long as nobody complains?

          Now that I reread my post, it does sort of sound like I'm saying that. Not my intention at all.

          Instead of "the company" I should have said "a 'profit at all cost' company like EA."

          And it's bad for them to do this. It's very short-term thinking. It leads to high turnover and bad PR, both very very expensive over time.

          Look at Google for a good counterexample. I kn

    • Re:$91840 salary + overtime? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nick_davison ( 217681 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2005 @07:20PM (#11750223)
      Do you make $91,840? I don't think too many programmers are making 91k nowadays.

      It's irrelevant whether they earn $5, $50 or $500 an hour. The point is that they agreed to work a roughly (accepting some deviation) 40 hour week for a given amount of money. And then the employer abused the exempt laws to force double or triple those hours out of them.

      It's entirely valid for EA to turn around and say, "OK, we're offering $20/hour with up to 40 hours overtime at time and a half each week". The problem is, they're not. They're hiring people under one belief and then abusing the system to change the terms of their contract after it's been signed.

      I'd bet no EA interview has ever gone, "OK, we'd like to put an offer on the table. $91840 a year for 80 hour weeks nine months of the year and 120 hour weeks the other three".

      Yes, the employees do have the right to just up and leave. That said, changing jobs, especially in an industry that deliberately pays advance royalties in order to keep you trapped, where job seeking can take several months, etc. means taking a hit of several, if not tens of, thousands of dollars. So, no, you can't just easily leave once you realise they've screwed you.

      I know I don't, it's expected that I work until the job is done.

      That's all well and good, when you're doing a job. When they deliberately give you the work of two people then say "oh, you're exempt, make up the extra job's worth out of hours", it stops being about getting your job done and becomes about management abusing the exempt system to avoid hiring the staff levels they need.

      A little overtime here and there, with some understanding on the odd Friday when you need to leave early is utterly different to a company that's built around the assumption that everyone will be forced to do 80 hours a week as a norm and 120 when you'd be doing 60.

  • Solution (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sylver Dragon ( 445237 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2005 @01:58PM (#11746317) Journal
    We haven't yet cracked the code on how to fully minimize the crunches in the development and production process.
    - From TFA

    Maybe, just maybe, you should consider setting more realistic goals? Granted, they want to hit the market during the holiday rush, but then, add more programmers.
    It sounds like EA is just trying to exist as a programming sweat shop, keep the minimum number of programmers to do the job, and push them to work ridiculous hours to make a deadline. While I don't want to see a law to stop this, I'd at least like to see a few good lawsuits take a ton of money from EA on this. Perhaps, fine them an amount equivilent to the net profit made from all the games which suffered from this sort of behavior, and divide it up between the people who worked under these conditions.

    • Re:Solution (Score:3, Interesting)

      by voisine ( 153062 )
      I suspect EA is trying to survive. I don't know what kind of profits they're making but there is a lot of competition in the gaming space. If they set realisting deadlines and add more programmers, it could easily double their production costs. I somehow doubt they're making 50% profit margins. They're prefectly justified in reducing costs anywhere they think they can get away with it. If the programmers don't like the way things are run and think they can do a better, why doesn't a group of them get togeth
      • I agreed with everything you said except:
        The infrastructure costs to get started are close to zero

        Um, huh? Computers + very expensive software + networking/bandwidth/etc. + very expensive development hardware (for consoles) + need for increasingly more people per project to remain competitive...ehh...I'm not sure about your infrastrucutre costs claim.

        • You're talking thousands of dollars per developer. Essentailly zero compared to the infrastructure cost of starting manufacturing plant or a mining operation.
          • Eh...probably. Given the expense of Maya + other software, it probably goes over 10 grand... Plus, you need an audio studio if you want to do anything decent with the audio. That's not cheap either.

            In any case, yes, definitely a game startup is nothing compared to a manufacturing plant or mining operation.. Absolutely. But those examples are fairly at the far end of the spectrum in terms of infrastructure. Also, they generally have much stronger business plans, are far more stable, and have a great dea

      • Re:Solution (Score:3, Informative)

        by homer_ca ( 144738 )
        I'll say they're surviving. They've been profitable [yahoo.com] for at least the last three years. They made a $577M net profit last fiscal year.
        • Good for them. They've done a good job of creating a valuable product while keeping the value they consume low. It looks like they've done this in part by getting as much valuable work from their engineers as they can while only paying them industry standard salaries. If they can find talented engineers willing to put up with this, more power to them. That's good business. I for one will probably buy their products, but not apply for any engineering positions there.
    • 1) RE: "programming sweat shop"....for the millionth time, this is NOT specific to EA. It's pandemic across the game industry. It's not even true of all of EA even!

      2) RE: "lawsuits take a ton of monet from EA"....great, so they fire some programers or scrap a game. That sounds wonderful.

      "divide it up between the people who worked under these conditions." ...whom they will no longer be able to employee due to lack of funds?
    • Granted, they want to hit the market during the holiday rush, but then, add more programmers.

      But the mythical man month [robelle.com] doesn't always work... because it's mythical.
    • Adding more programmers does not make things move faster. Your first statement is the bread & butter truth: EA has lost any sense of reality within its middle managers, producers, and leads. Perhaps it is a failing of upper management to have doable expectations, but the people who say "we can do it" are just as responsible.

  • Any relation to Rooby Roo?

  • To EA: (Score:2, Funny)

    by DoktorSeven ( 628331 )
    If you need to hire someone that won't be a crybaby when you make them work long hours for tons of money, hire me. Programming 100+ hours a week for good money is infinitely better than unemployment.

    I'll be waiting for your call.

    Thanks,
    DoktorSeven
  • Not that I'm unsympathetic to his cause (*wave the EA-is-Evil flag*), but the link seems to say that the reason he's not getting this overtime is because he's classified as a "creative employee" by the law. Programmers are easily just as much a 'creative employee' as the artists, in my opinion. As such, it is the law which is stupid and ought to be criticized.
    • Programming is not an art, contrary to the desires of some. A computer is an objective machine of logic and precision. It knows only two states and everything follows from this plain, objective operation. It is hence a science of engineering, and not an art of creation to program it. Software engineers may be imaginative in their uses of code, but they are still using code to feed complex mathematical formula to a machine.

  • Rather than go through all the replying... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ChristianBaekkelund ( 99069 ) <draco&mit,edu> on Tuesday February 22, 2005 @02:51PM (#11746974) Homepage
    Rather than replying to like 10 different posts shortly enough, I'll just write what I have to write pre-emptively.. ;)

    There have been so many misconceptions flying around about all this for a few months now, that's it has gotten ridiculous. The things I wished people understood are:

    a) This is NOT a problem specific to EA. It is a problem with many -- if not MOST -- game developers (in the U.S., especially). Game studios all over are plagued with these problems that everyone's been talking about. The IGDA has had a "Quality of Life" group for a while now, trying to work on these issues. So why does EA get mentioned the most? Simple, it's for the same reason that MS gets slammed the hardest when people talk about OS issues or software engineering hours, etc. etc... -- They're the biggest. By default, the biggest will always bear the brunt of the attack. The only reason this is an issue at all is BECAUSE it's pandemic of the game industry as a WHOLE.

    2) These things aren't even true within all of EA! EA is a large company, and while there are some groups that have these problems, it's hardly all of them! That's just yet another misconception people have.

    Personally, I am bothered by these issues, but because they are big problems facing the game industry as a whole, not just one company.
  • "Their case argues that EA's engineers "do not perform work that is original or creative," that they do not have management responsibilities and are seldom allowed to use their own judgement, according to extracts published by SiliconValley.com." I'd like to see EA try to prove in court that it does original or creative work.
  • [typical OSS advocate retard] if they just made their software opensource they wouldnt need to pay programmers anyways... [/typical OSS advocate retard] /rolleyes

  • QA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22, 2005 @03:29PM (#11747477)
    The whole industry needs an overhaul, and quick.

    Since this has turned into a complain-fest, it's my turn. I know programmers have it bad, but what about the QA department? I work at a company (see below) that does not pay its QA Leads OT. This wouldn't be that big a deal if we got paid a descent salary to start with or maybe had some perks. During Crunch-time last year, I worked 25 days in a row (12-hour days, mind you) and didn't get so much as a "thank you", much less proper compensation. It got to the point that my testers where making more than me a week.

    At least at EA, they have such perks as a free employee gym, free meals if you have to work OT, employee soccer/basketball fields, etc. At THQ (supposedly the second biggest publisher), we don't even have a freaking game/break room to relax in. It boggles my mind that a company that makes 600 million dollars a year can't afford to pay OT to those who deserve it. I'm not a greedy guy, but pay us what we are owed, before you are forced to.

    Ahhh, I feel a bit better now that I got to vent.

    • Re:QA (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Torgo's Pizza ( 547926 )
      Ha, those perks have you fooled. Those so-called perks are just tools of management to keep you at the building working longer. Most slaves (which is what they are) at these companies use these facilities or benefits and go straight back to work.

      What ends up happening is that the company spends a minimal amount of money to make the perks available, but recoup that amount because the employees are working longer which more than pays for it. Instead of asking for perks, you should be getting either cash,

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