10 Things EA Wants You To Forget

10. Making Employees Work 100+ Hour Weeks

Back in 2004, the partner of an EA employee, Erin Hoffman, took to writing a blog entitled "EA Spouse" to get the word out as to how ridiculous and demanding the working conditions at her significant other's studio were.

She revealed that employees were being asked to work 9am until 10pm, seven days a week, with "occasional Saturdays off for good behaviour", though this latter "reward" only kicked in after 6.30pm. This was alongside additional unpaid overtime if any deadlines or project goals required it.

Thankfully, Hoffman would later refer to the response to her blog as a "powderkeg", seeing EA make drastic changes to how they handle employees' rights, also settling a class action lawsuit to make working hours and general time management far more humane.

It must be said that the games industry features some of the most hard-working and doggedly resilient creative minds on the planet. EA's past errors were pointed out, but I hazard to guess there are many other people constantly working under unreasonable constraints.