A new Zenless Zone Zero clip touching on the topic of overtime has once again raised questions about the sustainability of crunch.
While the video, taken from the latest behind-the-scenes ZTALK, is presented in a light-hearted fashion – with goofy music and jovial vibes – it flags the real risks of working on a live service project which has committed to an outrageous six-week update cycle.
For those who don’t play, the urban RPG – like all of HoYoverse’s games – will be updated regularly with new characters, storylines, activities, minigames, improvements, and more. Often these updates will include dozens of hours of gameplay.
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In the interview, the group reveals that it does “tons” of overtime, and continues that “whenever there’s work to be done – boom, overtime”.
In one exchange, it’s pointed out that staff will often spend much of their working days in meetings, meaning they have to work overtime in order to catch up on any tasks they’ve missed.
Recently, ex-PS Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida pointed out that Chinese games are so strong right now because “they are made in an environment which allows for hiring a large number of personnel who can work long hours”.
He added that Japanese devs – notorious for their long working hours – can’t replicate that.
Earlier this month, Naughty Dog attracted intense criticism for forcing its staff to work 60-hour weeks in the run-up to Christmas to complete a milestone build of Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. The studio had previously committed to eradicating crunch.
We don’t think it’s any real surprise to learn HoYoverse’s devs are investing obscene hours into their games; the cadence of the updates they’re deploying would be simply unsustainable otherwise.
But it does raise serious questions about the human cost of the content we’re consuming.