Mortal Kombat Publisher Joins the Ever-Growing List of AAA Studios Accused of Crunch.

NetherRealm Studios is yet another name to add to the quickly growing list of big name developers allegedly abusing their employees with 100 hour weeks.

The studio behind Mortal Kombat and the Injustice series are the latest Triple A publisher to be accused of brutal crunch periods, low pay and gender discrimination.

Last week accusations came to light that Fortnite developer Epic Games had a workplace crunch culture that led to employees working 70 to 100 hour weeks. Contract staff spoke of a hostile and stressful working environment in which over-working was expected of them. This was following the Kotaku article earlier this month that went into detail on how vicious crunch periods caused BioWare employees stress, anxiety, depression and even panic attacks in the bathrooms.

These allegations of crunch have become all-to-common over the past couple of years with Triple A publishers such as CD Projekt Red, Rockstar Games, Electronic Arts and Telltale Games all having strong accusations against them. Many of the accused respond with the same answer: Overtime is voluntary.

While doing overtime may be voluntary on paper it comes as no surprise that, despite what the corporate heads say, many employees feel pressured and threatened into working 70 – 100 hour weeks. The person coaxing an employee into excessive overtime is their boss. The same boss that has control over a worker’s pay, livelihood, hell, pretty much their entire life. If an employee were to refuse to work these ‘voluntary’ hours, there is a fear that they will be fired. The excuse of this obvious abuse being nothing more than ‘voluntary overtime’ has been referred to by many as a proverbial ‘gun to your head’ situation. Employees either work the hours they’re told to work or risk losing their job which could lead to losing everything.

James Longstreet, who worked as a software engineer at NetherRealm Studios for 2 years, went into detail about intense crunch periods in the office. Longstreet notes that crunch took place during the development of many different games, such as 2015’s Mortal Kombat X, 2017’s Injustice 2 and last week’s Mortal Kombat 11. The former employee then went on to describe that it was common for employees to work from 10am to Midnight everyday while the company’s higher-ups went home at dinner time.

Former QA Tester Isaac Torres also gave a statement, saying:

“I crunched for about 4 months straight…I was regularly doing 90 to 100 hour weeks and worked every single day.”

Torres even stated that he knew of other employees would get to work at 9am and would not get home until 3am. Some were forced to sleep on the office couches out of fear that they would not be able to drive home without falling asleep at the wheel.

Further allegations were made by former NR concept artist Beck Hallstedt and QA analyst Rebecca Rothschild on Twitter. The two sum up that NetherRealm Studios is over-reliant on independent contractors, most of whom were paid only $12 an hour. Unless you were a woman. If you were a woman, you would get paid $11 even if you were doing the exact same job as a male member of staff.

The independent contractors were also offered no benefits or even an assurance of future employment once their contracts were up. To NetherRealm Studios, they were completely disposable and easily replaceable.

Hallstedt went on to also give allegations of gender discrimination and inappropriate behavior. Female employees were often excluded from important meetings, referred to by degrading insults and were forced to share unisex bathrooms which left many uncomfortable. According to PC Gamer, an anonymous source stated that a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was filed at one point in time.

NetherRealm Studios is yet to release a statement in response to these allegations of the abuse of their employees but one can guess that it will include ‘voluntary overtime’ as an excuse.