Well here is something to make you think this Monday morning. Fresh off the lovely thing we call the internet is a story about a former Gameloft employee who is accusing the mobile gaming publisher of overworking their employees who also cites “dangerous working conditions”.
The office in question is Gameloft’s Auckland office in New Zealand where one employee, Glen Watson, says that 120-hour work weeks and “a culture of purposely shortened project deadlines”. under New Zealand law, this falls under something called “fatiguing work” which is illegal and was passed in a law back in 2002. This law, which falls under the Health and Safety Employment Act in New Zealand, allows employees to right to refuse work.
Other employees who wish to remain nameless say this sort of practice is in place so that the New Zealand office for Gameloft can turn in project ahead of schedule to avoid being shut down. It seems as though even mobile game studios have real world issues when it comes to work conditions if Glen’s allegations are true. In the world of console gaming recently there have been similar allegations from Team Bondi regarding terrible working conditions while working on L.A. Noir. Developers and programmers at Gameloft’s Auckland office were constantly told that deadlines were coming close in order to make them work long hours including one programmer who had apparently been there for 24-hours straight according to Glen.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. For now though we will try and contact someone at Gameloft to get a statement of some kind regarding these accusations. For a full rundown of the details, check out the article over on Game.On.Net.
Website Referenced: Game.On.Net
