A four-day work week for Eidos Montreal, for real

Guardians of the Galaxy. © Square Enix/Marvel.

Game development studios have a reputation for poor working conditions and an unrealistic number of work hours. Especially criticized are “crunch” times, when developers have no choice but to work 65 to 80 hours a week in order to meet a release date, especially since these overtime hours often are uncompensated. Such human-resources practices have a negative impact on the health of developers as well as the quality of their work. They also push many people out of the industry to pursue a better work-life balance. Add to that the widespread labor shortage in the software industry, and studios are being forced to rethink the way they operate in order to attract and retain new talent.

Given all this, Eidos Montreal, the Square Enix studio currently working on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy game, announced that employees would now work only four days a week, Monday through Thursday. Working hours are reduced from 40 to 32 hours, without any changes in pay or working conditions. The studio says that it expects work hours to be used more efficiently, for example by reducing internal meetings from one hour to 30 minutes, and that it is convinced “that this renewed management of working time will help cultivate the creativity and motivation of the teams, and become a real driver of innovation and performance.” Now, it remains to be seen whether other studios follow suit.

⇨ The Verge, Ian Carlos Campbell, “Game developer Eidos-Montréal is switching to a four-day workweek.”

2021-10-07