5 Worst Development Crunch Stories in Gaming

Fortnite is the game that keeps on giving and refuses to go anywhere. What started as a fairly simple survival and crafting video game quickly became the absolute juggernaut we know it as today. What other game lets you play as Goku fighting Homer Simpson? But this work wasn’t done overnight, the team at Epic Games have been working continuously behind the scenes, making sure the game doesn’t fall apart. 

With the unparalleled success of Fortnite, employees were voluntarily asked (but not really voluntarily) to work longer work weeks, with one anonymous employee saying to Polygon that they work an average of 70 hours a week, but know some to work 100 hours. 

This employee went on to say that the biggest issue they face, and one of the reasons this crunch time goes on, is because they’re “patching all the time. The executives are focused on keeping Fortnite popular for as long as possible, especially with all the new competition that’s coming in.” 

Another anonymous employee told Polygon, “The executives keep reacting and changing things. Everything has to be done immediately. We’re not allowed to spend time on anything. If something breaks—a weapon, say—then we can’t just turn it off and fix it with the next patch. It has to be fixed immediately, and all the while, we’re still working on next week’s patch. It’s brutal."

Now, one of the biggest differences with this report of crunch time compared to the others so far is that this is still an ongoing issue. With the other stories, there was an end goal in sight, a release date to push for and a deadline. Fortnite is ongoing. As a live service game, the work never stops. The gears keep turning, and the developers keep burning the candle at both ends. Another employee at Epic talked about this issue, saying, “We’re always in crunch. Crunch never ends in a live service game like that. You’re always building more content and more stuff”. 

Many workers have claimed that even taking a day off is a struggle. With one employee saying, “The company gives us unlimited time off, but it’s almost impossible to take the time. If I take time off, the workload falls on other people, and no one wants to be that guy." 

Epic has seemingly tried to extinguish the fire by more than doubling its full-time employees since Fortnite released, but that hasn’t done much to change the situation. An anonymous contract worker at Epic said, “You’re on a contract. It could be three months, it could be a year. But if you don’t do the extra work, it’s most likely that your contract won’t be renewed." 

There’s no telling if or when the workload will ever ease up on the Epic developers. The popularity of Fortnite refuses to diminish and is still going as strong as ever in its ninth year, with content being added all the time. With the breakneck pace of development, it’s surprising that Epic has crumbled under the pressure. We can only assume the higher-ups at Epic throw money at the problem until it disappears. When asked about the ongoing crunch time, an Epic representative said that the team are “working very hard on Fortnite and other Epic efforts”. They later went on to say, “Extreme situations such as 100-hour work weeks are incredibly rare, and in those instances, we seek to immediately remedy them to avoid recurrence.”