4. Employee Treatment
What do you do when you're months away from a game's release and are in no real rush to develop it? Force your employees to work 9am-10pm 7 days a week! In 2004 EA came under attack as well as having to deal with various lawsuits due to their treatment of employees. Force over-time, no pay for said over-time and bags of Lidl's own brand tea rather than Tetley's. It's understandable that there's a deadline to reach when you're close to a game's release date (well to most companies, to Square Enix it's more seen as a target to miss) and that people will possibly have to work for longer, but when you're requiring your employees to work up to 100 hours a week during "non-crunch" periods, it starts to get a tad un-ethical. Look on the bright side though, according to an INTERNAL EA survey in 2007 emplyee morale was up 13%!