Game director apologises for his tweet glorifying crunch culture

Greg Schofield, director of The Callisto Protocol apologises after a now-deleted tweet seemingly glorifying crunch culture in games.

Crunch culture has long been derided by gamers and developers alike, as many see it as one of the biggest evils plaguing the modern games industry. “Crunch” is a common practice in game development studios where developers will have to work significant overtime in order to meet deadlines and get a game out on the advertised release date. At it’s worst, these stories include programmers sleeping at their desks and spending days without going home or seeing their families.

Studios that still participate in crunch are often heavily criticised, with one of the most notable cases of the last five years including Rockstar employees having to work 100-hour weeks to finish Red Dead Redemption 2. As such, it wasn’t the wisest move for Callisto Protocol director, Glen Schofield, to send out a tweet that many have interpreted as glorifying and promoting this practice.

In a now deleted tweet, Schofield praised employees for “working 6-7 days a week” and “12-15 hr days” stating that they’ve dealt with “exhaustion, tired, Covid but we’re working”. He makes clear that “nobody’s forcing us”, but the reception has been almost universally negative. Journalist Jason Schreier voiced his opinion in a tweet showing the one Schofield deleted.

This, from a studio head, is crunch culture defined. Of course nobody is “forced” to work insane hours. But imagine the reduced bonuses and lack of promotion opportunities if you don’t? “You do it because you love it.” Weaponized passion. This is why people burn out of gaming pic.twitter.com/seyE7tkPuf

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) September 3, 2022

Schreier describes this as “weaponized passion” and notes that although employees are not forced to work such hours, those who don’t in the game industry are often punished with reduced bonuses and lack of promotion opportunities. After the negative response, Schofield responded in another tweet apologising for what he said.

Anyone who knows me knows how passionate I am about the people I work with. Earlier I tweeted how proud I was of the effort and hours the team was putting in. That was wrong. We value passion and creativity, not long hours. I’m sorry to the team for coming across like this.

— Glen A. Schofield (@GlenSchofield) September 3, 2022

He stated that what he said in the original tweet was “wrong” and explains that the studio, Striking Distance, values “passion and creativity, not long hours”.

Written by Ryan Woodrow on behalf of GLHF.