Epic Games Employees Work Over 70 Hours To Keep ‘Fortnite’ On Top

Competition among popular video game titles is tough. Developers of current popular titles like “Fortnite” and “Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds” are always working hard in an attempt to get more and more players to keep playing their games. And as we can all see, they are succeeding in their efforts.

People working behind the scenes to make “Fortnite” the great game that it is, however, admit that they are working insane amount of hours just to keep it that way. And by “insane,” they mean more than 70 hours per week kind of insane.

Surprising find

After conducting a dozen interviews with Epic Games’ current and former employees and contractors, Polygon arrived at the conclusion that these developers continue to work “crunch” hours just to keep “Fortnite” ahead of the competition.

“Crunch” means working overtime for an extended period of time. Workers in a crunch typically spend more hours than usual to get jobs done as fast as they can, for as long as they need need to, even lasting well into months. This usually happens prior to the launch of a big title.

For Epic’s employees, it meant spending more hours than they really wanted to on the game, and losing precious time to rest, take a break, and even get a good night’s sleep.

“We worked, typically, 50- or 60-hour weeks and upwards of 70-hour weeks on occasion,” one source who worked as a contractor told the news outlet.

Crunch time

Epic’s game developers admit that a culture of fear has grown inside the company since “Fortnite Battle Royale” became a big hit. They said it wasn’t like that before the battle royale became famous, but once it did, things started to change drastically.

“We did overtime when it was necessary,” one interviewee said. “But we always got a fair amount of time for people to prepare for crunch, and it was not mandatory.”

Although the employees said they were not required to work overtime, the culture inside the workplace implies that they should. They said they can take days off if they wanted to, but the work they leave when they rest falls on someone else’s shoulders, discouraging them from taking the break they need.

Common but uncommon

Polygon reports that its common for AAA game developers to work overtime for a variety of valid reasons, such as a near-release or an upcoming update. Sometimes, however, crunch can lead to a variety of mismanagement problems that can affect the game very badly.