6 Biggest Gaming Industry Controversies Of The 2020s (So Far)

6. Crunch Culture

"Crunch culture" is understood as unpaid overtime in which staff work insanely long hours to meet development milestones.

Red Dead Redemption 2, The Last Of Us Part 2 and especially Cyberpunk 2077 - the common denominator for these IPs is that they are subject to intense levels of crunch to meet deadlines.

The rise in “games as a service” models, annual releases, AAA budget projects and more reports of producer interference mean that a lot of games are facing insanely short timeframes for huge amounts of work. Culture is the key word, as there is not much in the ways of legislation or unionisation regarding the intense work hours faced by dev teams.

This crunch does not seem to always guarantee success either, as seen with the likes of Cyberpunk 2077.

Hopefully as we move forward in the industry, hard and passionate developers can be afforded a healthy work-life balance, with better scheduling and attainable goals.