Mortal Kombat Devs Speak Out About Severe Crunch at Studio

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Various developers from NetherRealm Studios, of Mortal Kombat 11 fame, have come out with stories of the "crunch culture."

Lately news has been coming out about working condition at some gaming studios, from Rockstar Games to Epic Games. Mortal Kombat 11‘s NetherRealm isn’t exempt from the list, according to various tweets from full-time workers and multiple contractors as well as a new article from PC Gamer.

Once such account from James Longstreet, a software engineer at NetherRealm for two years, is quite telling of the “crunch culture” that pervaded the studio:


The entire Twitter thread describes his experience in full detail. And Beck Hallstedt, who contributed to Injustice 2 as a contract concept artist, adds tales of her own trials at NetherRealm, which according to her own Twitter thread came with even more discriminatory practices:





And previous QA tester Isaac Torres, who worked at NetherRealm on Injustice and is now a designer at Iron Galaxy states: “I crunched for about 4 months straight…I was regularly doing 90-100 hour weeks and worked every single day.

“I was tired all the time. It took me about 30-45 mins to get home since I had to take a bus. But I know someone who stayed on the couch in the office to not risk falling asleep while driving. I literally had no life for several months. There just wasn?t time. I would get to work at 9 or 10 am. I would leave at 2-3 am. And then that process would mostly repeat itself. Honestly, I have no clue how I did it. I?m pretty sure I aged 20 years in the span of three months.”


There are plenty more stories from other developers, some who remained anonymous due to fear of blacklisting and retribution. But one message is clear — the conditions laid out here are troubling and must be addressed in order to create a better environment for those who work hard to bring us such great games.



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Source: https://www.dualshockers.com/mortal-kombat-devs-speak-crunch/

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"Mortal Kombat Devs Speak Out About Severe Crunch at Studio" :: Login/Create an Account :: 5 comments

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JoeIPosted:

At least people are saying what they think!

AnimePosted:

At least they are talking openly about the game.

TOXICPosted:

nice to see them speak there mind.

XboxPosted:

Sounds like a nightmare when most people would think it's a dream job. Think they would treat their workers a lot better than that.

kimPosted:

This is insane deadlines need to be pushed back at times for the sake of the people's health working there, this is truthfully unbearable.

Working on games is supposed to be a dream job but in reality these people don't get paid a ton and are always in a hustle that ruins their lives..