Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier took aim at studio director Glen Schofield for a tweet in which he talked about 12-15 hour work days and that being a labour of love.

Crunch time in game development is a hot button. Glen swiftly apologised.

Original tweet:

I only talk about the game during an event. We r working 6-7 days a week, nobody’s forcing us. Exhaustion, tired, Covid but we’re working. Bugs, glitches, perf fixes. 1 last pass thru audio. 12-15 hr days. This is gaming. Hard work. Lunch, dinner, working. U do it cause ya luv it

Jason:

This, from a studio head, is crunch culture defined. Of course nobody is “forced” to work insane hours. But imagine the reduced bonuses and lack of promotion opportunities if you don’t? “You do it because you love it.” Weaponized passion. This is why people burn out of gaming

Such a weird coincidence how the guy bragging about how his team works 6-7 days a week for 12-15 hours a day because they love it also happens to be the guy who controls all their salaries, titles, and current employment status

If anyone working for Striking Distance Studios has thoughts on this tweet or a story to share, my DMs are open or you can reach me securely at jasonschreier@protonmail.com. I can keep you anonymous and walk you through how I protect my sources.

Glen's apology:

Anyone who knows me knows how passionate I am about the people I work with. Earlier I tweeted how proud I was of the effort and hours the team was putting in. That was wrong. We value passion and creativity, not long hours. I’m sorry to the team for coming across like this.

The Callisto Protocol is scheduled to release on PC (Steam and Epic), Xbox and PlayStation on December 2.

Typically developers aim to have a game finished to be submitted for mass production of physical copies a month before release, so development time is running out.

Glen's original tweet was probably aimed at reassuring players that the game will launch on time, but times have changed and no-one has time for crunch time.

[ Main Image: The Callisto Protocol. Credit: Krafton via Steam. ]

References

Schofield, Glen A. [@GlenSchofield] (September 4, 2022). Anyone who knows me knows how passionate I am about the people I work with. Twitter.

Schreier, Jason [@jasonschreier] (September 4, 2022). This, from a studio head, is crunch culture defined. Twitter.