Activision QA worker warns OSHA about the devastating impact of crunch

polygon.com:

Amber La Macchia was prepared to deal with crunch before she even joined the video game industry — it’s something she heard over and over again while studying game design in college just five years ago.

The practice of crunch — a word that games industry workers use to describe brutal overtime — is well-documented across multiple video game studios. You’d be hard-pressed to find a developer who hasn’t encountered it at least once. The industry has started to reckon with crunch, to better understand just how badly it hurts both workers and video games; studios like Rockstar Games, Activision Blizzard, CD Projekt Red, Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Sagadeveloper TT Games, Epic Games, and plenty more have been criticized for the practice. But has the industry changed in response to this public scrutiny? It’s starting to, as workers push back against the practice, refusing to put their health and safety at risk for work.

La Macchia, a senior QA tester at Activision, is one of those workers. This week, she’s at the Department of Justice’s Workers’ Voice Summit in Washington, D.C., where she’s acting as a representative for the video game industry and, in particular, for Communication Workers of America’s efforts to make the industry more equitable for workers.

La Macchia is addressing government officials during the three-day conference, educating them about the health and safety risks associated with crunch.

“The video game industry is brand new, at least compared to many of the other industries in the United States,” La Macchia told Polygon. “OSHA is not very present when it comes to health and safety [in the video game industry]. One of the big things that I would like to see done is proper investigation, training for