Over the past several months, the true cost of triple-A game development has come to light. To meet deadlines, major studios often rely on “crunch,” or overtime work hours. This crunch can last for weeks and sometimes months, and it puts unnecessary strain on individual workers. However, there’s at least one game studio where crunch has been entirely done away with. The CEO of Dead by Daylight developer Behavior Interactive recently explained how he chose to walk a better path.
Dead by Daylight Developer Eliminates Mandatory Crunch
Behavior Interactive CEO Rémi Racine chronicled the studio’s shift away from crunch in a recent blog post. The tale Racine tells begins roughly 20 years ago when he first realized he needed to make changes within the studio. After seeing the compounded negative effects of employees pulling all-nighters, Racine decided that a shift in protocol was needed.
Over the following ten years, Racine implemented key changes to Behavior’s staff policy as it worked on games like Dead by Daylight. In some cases, the changes were heavy-handed, but necessary. One such change was banning employees from sleeping in the studio overnight. Employees could stay up late working on a project, but they always had to go home at some point. Other changes were less severe but still effective. Working on weekends, for example, became something that was technically allowed, but never mandatory.
Today, Racine says Behavior has reached a point where most employees work a standard eight-hour day every day. The shift away from mandatory overtime and crunch has had far more positive results than negative according to Racine’s post. Employees are happier, more focused, and more motivated. As a result, Behavior has never missed a deadline or gone over budget. Overtime does still happen sometimes, but it doesn’t have the destructive long-term effects it has at some other studios.
Best of all, Behavior is still able to produce quality updates for Dead by Daylight on a consistent schedule. With his post, Racine isn’t thumbing his nose at other developers who rely on crunch. He’s merely proving with hard facts that crunch isn’t as necessary as some would like to believe. It’s entirely possible to create quality games without relying on overtime crunch. Behavior Interactive is clear proof of that.