Anonymous essay from a spouse of an EA employee

very nice read, indeed

I wouldn't like to work in an EA in-house development studio (especially not after reading the essay), EA can be hard to get along with when you cooperate with them for a publishing deal.

So if i get it right, if someone sues EA now then EA gotta pay a few billion dollar overtime and go bankrupt?

EA advocates child-rape.

EA = evil. And they make too much crappy games about movies.

Quote from FrieChamp

I wouldn't like to work in an EA in-house development studio (especially not after reading the essay), EA can be hard to get along with when you cooperate with them for a publishing deal.

HAR.

see, you shoulda sticked with ubi!

I won't further comment anything related to EA (I'm simply not in the position to do that and still a n00b in this industry), but I think there are differences in habits between EA USA and EA England. Also, even if EA puts more pressure on the developers, everybody wants to work with EA. They got lots of money and they got lots of connections studios can profit from. I heard each game EA has published has sold at least 1 million times, I don't know if that's the official word though.

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HAR. see, you shoulda sticked with ubi!

Not after FarCry...

I'd work at EA only if that meant i could beat the shit out of the voice actor for Burnout 3. God that guy is so annoying.

so true

IO worked with EA on Freedom Fighters, and the general meaning towards EA isnt very positive to say that least. Especially since they didnt do shit to advertise Freedom Fighters.

Anyway, havent read that stuff (will do it when I get to work tomorrow), but I assume its about how horrible EA r, which isnt news to me

I've worked with, or currently work with, three of our major internal studios that we own: Volition, Rainbow and Relic. They all work hard and put in overtime during a crunch period, but I've never heard anything like that story about 85 hour weeks at EA over and over and over through the life of a project with no comp time. That's kinda scary that it's like that.

Quote from KungFuSquirrel

Apparently it's not even a matter of getting the content done - I spoke to someone who was working on the team specifically referred to in the article (and apparently another team had it worse - the 12-13 hour/7 days a week conditions for perhaps a year or more), and he said that not only was it required to work those hours, but content was getting done and people were sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for more content and were still forced to remain there for 'moral support.' Ouch.Edit: Even more ouch is that sentence structure... I won't even bother

It sounds like EA is run by fucking Stalin.

I know a large group of people that all came from EA, and based on all of thier testimony I will never ever consider working for, or with EA. Here is some of the highlights of the stories I have heard from vetran EA employees:

- 8 month crunch (7 days a week) during which x-mas was cancelled, and anyone who took any x-mas vacation was fired.

- a policy of no talking during work hours becuase some employees were trying to start a union. (stay at your desk all day and don't get up and talk to people)

I heard a nasty story where people were told that some positions were available on other in-house projects and they were asked if they'd like to join these teams. The next day, everybody who said yes the day before got fired.

So it was sort of used as a secret test for loyality among employees, and everybody that didn't give a loyal answer was handed a few bags of fresh unemployment breeze.

Can't verify this myself as I've never worked there, but I heard it from a industry veteran who left EA and was one of the more or less higher ups there..

Holy shit...

EA also make crap games.

Surely you don't consider The Sims: Makin' Magic a crappy game...