The International Game Developers Association or IGDA will today begin an investigation into the work practices of Australian L.A Noire developers Team Bondi.
Ex-Team Bondi employees have spoken of the studios horrid work ethic’s, even forcing employees to work 100 hour weeks.
Brendan McNamara founded Team Bondi in 2003, he said that Team Bondis work ethics are not unfair. This was countered when the IGDA’s Brian Robbins came out against this claim saying, “Certainly reports of 12-hour a day, lengthy crunch time, if true, are absolutely unacceptable and harmful to the individuals involved, the final product, and the industry as a whole,” Robbins told Develop.
“We encourage any Team Bondi employee and/or family member to email qol@igda.org with comments about the recent past and current situation – positive or negative,”
What’s more if targets were not met a working week could rise to 110 hours plus.
“If you left at 7.30pm, you’d get evil eyes,” one studio source claimed.
“The crunch was ongoing. It just kept on shifting; an ominous crunch that just keeps moving, and moving. Management would say, ‘Oh, it’ll finish once we meet this deadline,’ but the deadline kept moving. That went on for a good year.”
Many may remember Rockstar being scrutinised for unfair working policies, so to see Team Bondi following the same path is a little worrying to say the least.
