FromSoftware Employees Deserve Better After The Success Of Elden Ring

thegamer.com:

Elden Ring is the biggest game of the year. It has catapulted FromSoftware into the mainstream conversation like never before, eclipsing the likes of Horizon Forbidden West with its inhospitable open world and unforgivable boss battles.

Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro all had their fans and were massive successes in their own right, but there’s something different about Elden Ring. It’s the culmination of Hidetaka Miyazaki’s artistic vision that many are hailing as a masterpiece.

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But the games we love are all direct products of human beings. Artists, designers, writers, programmers, QA, and so many other disciplines banding together to try and make the impossible a reality. This is a game that took years to make, and likely resulted in countless sleepless nights and personal sacrifices to see it over the finish line.

Crunch is a common theme across the games industry, with companies big and small doing everything they can to combat its presence in the game development pipeline. Sadly it feels inevitable in some circumstances when it really shouldn’t be. Insomniac Games didn’t crunch at all on Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, resulting in a gorgeous and confident platformer that didn’t feel hamstrung in any regard. Mass Effect 2, generally hailed as not just the best Mass Effect but one of the best games ever, was also made with no crunch. You don’t need to crunch to make great games.

Recent reports have surfaced following the game’s launch that paint FromSoftware as a rather problematic place of employment, especially for women. A number of workers have made anonymous reports on CareerConnection, a website that allows workers to report details