Xbox Responds to Bethesda Crunch Culture Allegations

gamerant.com:

One of the problems that the gaming industry has been attempting to avoid in recent years is a crunch culture. In terms of gaming, crunch often occurs when a development team is rushing to complete a title, involving employees working for lengthy amounts of time. One of the reasons some games like Horizon Forbidden West were delayed was due to a company wanting to avoid crunch. However, these cases of compulsory overtime still take place, with Xbox and Bethesda specifically dealing with a recent report of crunch.

Early in June 2022 a report revealed that during the development of Fallout 76, the team at Bethesda experienced a great deal of pressure to continue coming in to work overtime, with low hourly pay and little incentive to do so. According to the report, this constant pressure on the development team is one of the reasons that Fallout 76 launched in such a broken state, with fans of the series heavily criticizing the game.

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Now, Head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty has responded to the report in via a Q&A when he was asked to address it. Booty began by stating that Xbox took all reports of crunch culture «seriously,» before adding that the report and a lot of articles like it «tend to look backwards, sometimes pretty far back in time.» He then went on to say that crunch is something developers used to wear «like a badge of honor.»

Booty confirms that he doesn't «justify» crunch, but he does explain that it was a part of the industry. "[Crunch] was just part of the industry," he said. «It was part of the culture of the industry. I literally slept under my desk early in my career.» As much as crunch culture was a part of the gaming