If you think that the players bear most of the risk of working in esports, think again. The options for software developers who program these titles are not much better. While many software engineers and designers may initially be attracted by the six-figure salaries that game publishers offer, the working conditions are not substantially better for the developers than they are for the players.
Although the industry touts a 40-hour work week except when projects are due, projects are always due. It is normal for software developers to work 12-14 hours per day seven days a week to deliver code on schedule. Developers on popular game titles typically log between 70 and 100 hours per week.
Once a title is delivered, it is common for software publishers to fire the software developers who worked on the project. To date this year, more than 6,400 software developers have been laid off from companies like Microsoft, Epic Games, Electronic Arts (EA), and Amazon Unity.
(How do you like them apples?)
The reason for this lies buried in the employment laws of California and Washington, where many game development studios operate. According to laws in these states, workers are assumed to be “statutory employees.” Statutory employees are on the company payroll. They receive benefits, sick time, vacation time, and other workplace protections, like overtime when eligible. The employer deducts and pays taxes, and importantly, pays unemployment compensation insurance premiums.
Game development studios would prefer to hire independent contractors. In these circumstances, the employer would pay workers according to the terms of a contract. The contractors would receive no benefits, no sick time, no vacation time, no overtime, and no unemployment benefits. When the project was complete, the contractors would simply “go away.”
Unemployment is part of the job for game software developers
However, state laws in Washington and California don’t permit this. There are few exceptions to the independent contracting restrictions. A key requirement is that employers must limit independent contractors to performing work that is not part of the company’s core business. A game development studio can hire an independent contractor to clean the offices, or keep the books, but cannot hire an independent software developer to add extra development capacity when a title is coming due.
To comply with the law, the game development studios hire software developers as regular salaried employees, with benefits and all the trappings of regular employment. But when the project they’re assigned to is complete, the company eliminates their position.
If you know that’s the model, you can manage the instability in the industry. But this strategy also acts as a gatekeeping mechanism. It eliminates opportunities for working mothers, most of whom cannot tolerate 80-hour work weeks or the inherent instability of unemployment. The strategy also eliminates older workers who may already have established families and people who just aren’t into working 16-hour days 7 days a week. Not surprisingly, 58% of software developers in a recent Payscale survey plan to quit their jobs.
And of course, some game development studios bypass the problem by off-shoring all of their development work to countries that don’t offer these protections to their workers. That also eliminates the need to pay the market-rate salaries and benefits that the domestic workforce expects.
It’s beyond unfortunate that our community college wants to support and contribute to this abusive work environment. But of course, things could always be worse, right?
Tomorrow, I will look at what could be the biggest challenge that esports may face in the near future.
Photo Credit: Sergiy Galyonkin, via Flickr. Image cropped for aspect ratio.
