Thursday, December 10, 2009
Portrait of a Video Game Studio's Collapse
“I would love to visit him in prison,” former employee Paul Grimshaw said of Sensory Sweep president Dave Rushton, echoing the sentiments of other former employees...This is the most accurate and most detailed account of the collapse of Sensory Sweep - my former "day job." My best guess is that I left in the nick of time - another three weeks or so, and I doubt I'd have ever gotten my final paychecks.
When I was there, the company had the distinction of probably being the largest independent game studio in North America, courtesy of Bioware being bought up by EA. I was one of something like 200 employees.
Now, some people who have heard about this story ask, "Why didn't people leave when the paychecks started bouncing / appearing late?" A few have even gone so far as to blame the employees for letting themselves get exploited and ripped off for sometimes more than $10,000. Here's my take on it.
I was lucky enough to get out while the getting was... well, not good, but not quite disastrous yet. I was able to do this because I was #1 - A programmer with a lot of non-games-industry experience who could actually find another job (and one I really enjoy!) in the midst of a nasty recession. Pity the poor game designers! And #2 - I'd been through something like this before in the 2001 recession, and knew the warning signs.
But here's why I believe people DID stay. It's why I stayed as long as I did:
#1 - You only collect unemployment if you are laid off, not if you quit. While you could argue that late paychecks constituted effective termination, this takes time, and is not be guaranteed. So there's really little to be gained by making a show of storming out the door when told, once again, that paychecks aren't ready on payday.
#2 - Throughout the latter half of 2008, paychecks WERE still arriving - late. While it's frustrating as hell, the management was making good on its promises (up until a point) that paychecks WERE coming. We were still getting paid. You get to a point where you get used to the uncertainty. But it also makes it difficult to tell when paychecks are just "late" or "never coming again."
#3 - We were in the middle of a recession (well, in retrospect, still in the beginning of a recession, it seems...). Jobs were already scarce, especially for people like game designers. A job that is currently theoretically paying you is preferable to no job guaranteed not to pay you.
#4 - When the company is in trouble and (supposedly) depending on your project to make everything good again, it's very hard to abandon your teammates and fellow employees. There's a certain level of tolerance for B.S. that you find yourself willing to take in order to make sure that if things fail and a whole bunch of people lose their jobs, it's not your fault.
#5 - It's easy to get addicted to smoking "hopium" in these situations - especially when you like what you are doing and you like the people you work with, and you hear promises from above about how awesome things will be once the group can "power through" this rough patch. There's always a chance it will be true.
And again, nobody realized at this point that their 401k contributions hadn't actually been "held up" but had instead been used to pay salaries (allegedly, I guess I should say...). And who really checks to verify that their FICA withholdings actually made it all the way to the Social Security office?
Anyway - while I would generally prefer working for a small, independent game studio over a big-budget publisher-owned studio, I kinda doubt you'd have seen anything like this happen at an EA studio. I think this should be required reading for anybody seriously considering a career in the videogames biz. And even more so for anybody contemplating starting a game studio. So here's your cautionary tale for the week:
Sensory Sweep Shortchange
Sobering stuff.
Labels: Biz
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:52 AM (Permalink)
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Yikes... yeah, that's one reason I don't seek work with the game companies. I don't need that kind of instability in my job.
I've worked for outright crooks before in other industries. A local television company I was employed at was pretty bad.
I was working graveyard shifts of 3am-2pm five days a week, with another 4-6 hours on weekends. The owner had me taping stuff off satellite for broadcast that I'm pretty certain we didn't have permissions to air or distribute. And the high point was he claimed to have more broadcast area than he had; he used VCR's and tapes of music videos at transmitter stations to be able to claim air time in different markets. (A saleswoman quit after she found this out from a client)
And after I quit, with the owner threatening to sue me, he withheld my final paycheck. I eventually got it a year later, because L&I sat on the case for nine months.
I'd say you got out at the best possible time... but I'd have been job hunting the first time a paycheck was late or bounced. I've never worked for a company that's done that, but any trust I had in them would be blown away at that point.
I've worked for outright crooks before in other industries. A local television company I was employed at was pretty bad.
I was working graveyard shifts of 3am-2pm five days a week, with another 4-6 hours on weekends. The owner had me taping stuff off satellite for broadcast that I'm pretty certain we didn't have permissions to air or distribute. And the high point was he claimed to have more broadcast area than he had; he used VCR's and tapes of music videos at transmitter stations to be able to claim air time in different markets. (A saleswoman quit after she found this out from a client)
And after I quit, with the owner threatening to sue me, he withheld my final paycheck. I eventually got it a year later, because L&I sat on the case for nine months.
I'd say you got out at the best possible time... but I'd have been job hunting the first time a paycheck was late or bounced. I've never worked for a company that's done that, but any trust I had in them would be blown away at that point.
I was actually already casually job-hunting BEFORE the first paycheck bounced (at the beginning of June, I think). But when that happened, I turned up the intensity a few notches.
You summed it up pretty nicely; I left a month or two after you and am missing pay for about 5 weeks of work. They were still doing a decent job of giving us most of our paychecks (albeit late) right up until I left. Strangely enough, the straw that broke the camel's back for me was the laughable comp time rather than the late pay.
Despite the reasons for staying, it got to a point for some people where they hadn't been paid in literally months. Those are the people I just could never understand or justify. At that point you literally are making more theoretical money looking for a job full time.
Despite the reasons for staying, it got to a point for some people where they hadn't been paid in literally months. Those are the people I just could never understand or justify. At that point you literally are making more theoretical money looking for a job full time.
That is almost the same situation i faced while working at Track7 Games. The major difference is that the company was "good" with the government side of things because it was related to some other bigger company (which decided to stop funding, but never ran out of money) and they would risk their image.
But from every employee's POV, it was exactly the same. Late payments almost since i joined (one month late actually). This lasted for a year or so, until a little before Christmas 2007->2008. At this point the payment was very late and personally until the point i was let go (with the rest of the programming team and most artists) they owed me six months worth of payment.
The reasons me (and everyone else i know of) stayed until that point are exactly those who mention (with slightly different, but similar, reason when it comes to the economic part).
But from every employee's POV, it was exactly the same. Late payments almost since i joined (one month late actually). This lasted for a year or so, until a little before Christmas 2007->2008. At this point the payment was very late and personally until the point i was let go (with the rest of the programming team and most artists) they owed me six months worth of payment.
The reasons me (and everyone else i know of) stayed until that point are exactly those who mention (with slightly different, but similar, reason when it comes to the economic part).
Interesting. Thanks for the link!
Have you ever read Me, Myself, and Bob? It's the story of Big Idea founder Phil Vischer (famous for "Veggie Tales") and the reasons why the company eventually went under and got auctioned off to Classic Media. He's a Christian and talks about it frequently in the book, but even if you're not interested in that side of things, it's still very much a cautionary business tale that some managers have made required reading.
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Have you ever read Me, Myself, and Bob? It's the story of Big Idea founder Phil Vischer (famous for "Veggie Tales") and the reasons why the company eventually went under and got auctioned off to Classic Media. He's a Christian and talks about it frequently in the book, but even if you're not interested in that side of things, it's still very much a cautionary business tale that some managers have made required reading.
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