U do it cause ya luv it

Game director on The Callisto Protocol, Glen Schofield, recently put up a tweet talking about the game's development. In the tweet, Schofield says that the team at Striking Distance Studios is working "6-7 days a week" with 12-15 (hour) days" to try to meet the game's December 2 release date. In addition, he says that this is being done while dealing with issues such as exhaustion and COVID.

As you can imagine, Schofield's tweet immediately raised more than a few eyebrows from anybody who has ever worked in the gaming industry or knows even the smallest bit about crunch in relation to the industry. The tweet was quickly deleted by Schofield but not before it made the rounds on social media and with plenty of screen grabs to share.


If for some reason the above tweet doesn't load, the content of Schofield's original tweet says the following:

It doesn't take a genius to know that working almost a full 7 days a week at upwards of 15 hours per day isn't healthy nor sustainable. This is crunch and Schofield's tweet seems to be akin to bragging about engaging in crunch culture, an issue that has plagued game development for ages now.

Since making and subsequently deleting the tweet, Schofield has yet to address any of the criticism.

In recent years, more and more studios have made attempts to reduce or outright eliminate the crunch that the development teams face. Studios that engage in crunch culture, or even go so far as to brag about it, have been criticized as exploiting their workers. While it may be easy for upper management to say that "nobody is forcing us," that may not hold true for those working below them. While workers may not be explicitly "forced" to work, they may feel a social pressure to work extra hours, or crunch, out of fear of how not participating may impact their careers.

Studios that have attempted to reduce crunch have had to make several changes to how they develop games. Some studios have opted to delay the release date of games, while others have opted instead to change some gameplay design to make development easier. Studios such as Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, CD Projekt Red, and even Rockstar Games have either delayed games or made internal changes in an effort to eliminate crunch.

The Callisto Protocol is currently expected to be released on December 2, 2022 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. The game was last shown off at Gamescom Opening Night Live, and despite it supposedly running on PlayStation 5 hardware, was looking a little rough in terms of framerate, frame pacing, and even some visual shortcomings. I personally wouldn't be surprised to hear that this game gets delayed unless, of course, this "not forced" crunch manages to finalize the game in the remaining three months.

Update: Shortly after this tweet started making the rounds, Schofield deleted the tweet and walked it back a bit, issuing an apology to his team in the process.