In a move sure to bring the industry in line with the rest of the developed world, Free Radical has pledged to begin paying overtime to developers who work long, late hours on their upcoming FPS Haze. Previously it was industry standard to ask devs to work late for standard pay and a theoretical bonus at the end, but after realizing this practice is tantamount to enslaving natives and chopping their feet off when they get ‘uppity’ Free Radical has departed from the long-standing tradition.
The most striking point about this story is that the entirety of what makes this piece newsworthy is a newly acquired feature of employment at Free Radical that is almost universally taken for granted in other professions. If game companies weren’t so adept at hiring starry-eyed kids straight out of university with almost no regard for their own health or wellbeing, they’d all have been forced to live by the same standards as butchers, bakers or candlestick makers long ago. Sadly, since everyone who gets into the gaming industry would kill their parents for the chance they’ve been given, it wouldn’t be entirely shocking to hear Activision change its name to Amistad Games.
