This Is How They Get Away With It:" Former NetherRealm Studios Contract Devs Reveal a Troubling Studio Culture

[Sage Leviathan]

Also, lol at people bringing up Donald Trump as the standard for how every company and corporation began. With daddies money.

You're candidate lost in 2016 and will lose in 2020. You're not getting anymore freebies or free passes in your life. Get over it and get his dick out of your mouth.

Well... here it is. Get your block buttons.

 

[ColdBoreMK23]

Mhm? I'm no doctor, but I'm sure nobody's going to be a good surgeon after 30 hours of shift.

Refer to video above

 

[ZeroSymbolic]

We are at the lowest unemployment rate since 1969 in this country.

People walk 1500 miles for a chance to enter this country illegally. The minimum wage manual labor jobs I grew up doing on the NJ shore are now going mostly to eastern European kids who make their way here for the summer, work off the books, then return home. Because American kids, even those "living in poverty" would rather sit at home and play video games.

The highest obesity rates in America are those "living in poverty." The highest obesity rates in the developed world are the American people "living in poverty."

But sure. Let's all sit around and feel sorry the contract workers who voluntarily elected to take a temporary job at NRS that they could have walked away from any hour of any day. In the best labor market of any of their lifetime's they just can't survive without those slave labor like conditions. Whatever.

I feel as bad as the next guy about kids being born into poor families in the US. But if you're going to be born into a poor family anywhere in the world, there's nowhere better to do it than the US. And your chances of moving from poverty to wealth are higher in the US than anywhere else in the world. Capitalism is the worst economic system the world has ever known, other than everything else ever tried.

AH-FUCKING-MEN!

 

[KingHippo]

Permission to shoot

But sure. Let's all sit around and feel sorry the contract workers who voluntarily elected to take a temporary job at NRS that they could have walked away from any hour of any day. In the best labor market of any of their lifetime's they just can't survive without those slave labor like conditions. Whatever.

What's it like to be a complete ninny? Asking for a friend

 

[ColdBoreMK23]

Lol at people threatening anybody with blocking me or anyone else in this thread. The major ones complaining dont even contribute to the tech if the game. I've yet to see the majority of you chime in on character discussion or anything actually related to MK11.

No wonder why the tourney goers hardly post here.

 

[BlackShade]

Sad to hear this about NRS. Himmerick seems to be a doucebag.

 

[aj1701]

Not sure how "No software jobs would benefit from a union." when you consider the basis for this thread and the fact that a union would give the employees a voice and some leverage when it comes to their working conditions. You can thank unions for even having an eight hour workday, no child labor, and over time pay in the first place. Go and look at what working conditions were like before the fair labor act of 1938. You have probably personally benefited from things unions fought for as long as you have had a job.

The basis of this thread is BS; if someone doesn't like making $11/hr programming a video game, they can go get a job anywhere else building anything but a video game for more money. No need to even leave the field. Problem solved. And if enough people got their head out of their ass and did that, the wage for video game programmers would rise because the supply and demand for them would equalize.

I never said unions were always useless; they were certainly needed when the industrial revolution got underway. But they've outlived their usefulness and now cause more harm then good. They should have gone away once the major issues were tackled. Our economy is also much different today; before it was farm or manufacturing. There's so many more options now, especially good paying professional trade and office jobs.

 

[CorneliusBrutus]

The basis of this thread is BS; if someone doesn't like making $11/hr programming a video game, they can go get a job anywhere else building anything but a video game for more money. No need to even leave the field. Problem solved. And if enough people got their head out of their ass and did that, the wage for video game programmers would rise because the supply and demand for them would equalize.

I never said unions were always useless; they were certainly needed when the industrial revolution got underway. But they've outlived their usefulness and now cause more harm then good. They should have gone away once the major issues were tackled. Our economy is also much different today; before it was farm or manufacturing. There's so many more options now, especially good paying professional trade and office jobs.

Engineering is rarely the exploited class in game development. As a gameplay programmer there's demand for my services and I'm compensated well enough (although on average salaries trend lower than for engineers in other fields). It would be patently absurd for someone to pay an engineer $11/hr, they would have to be so unqualified to consider accepting that contract that their work output would be completely unusable. The article, based on my reading, mostly refers to the exploitation of contract workers in art and QA, which have way less leverage, especially because there's an army of young people willing to take their place, even if their motivations might be misguided. It's a complicated issue, one that shouldn't be hand-waved away by saying "well they shouldn't have allowed themselves to be taken advantage of". It's a classic tactic across entry level positions in so many industries to offer the possibility of future opportunities gated behind a period of abuse and exploitation, when in reality the chance that those opportunities actually manifest for a given individual is low or nearly impossible. There's no way to know whether or not that's true without tremendous insight into company culture and supernatural foresight. I'd like to live in a world where everyone's contributions to the project are valued and compensated in a reasonably fair manner, even entry level employees, and for the record there are plenty of companies that do so.

 

[F6TUS6AT6R]

Im gonna go into my concrete job tomorrow and tell them all that im going on twitter to call them a bunch of meanie poopoo heads with pottymouths. The gatorade is never good enough, its always the yellow kind and never the blue kind. Sometimes, they eat lunch in groups and never invite me. Once we had a job that needed to be done that day and you know what the boss did...he told us in a very stern daddy voice that this shit needs to be done today. Boy, my heart hurt after that. .....you see how ridiculous all that sounds? Same. Exact. Thing.

 

[KingHippo]

But they've outlived their usefulness and now cause more harm then good. They should have gone away once the major issues were tackled

 

[Kratilim]

I'm an artist in the games industry, and getting a job as an artist in ANY field but more specifically this one is like trying to be noticed by the band at a rock concert. Its crazy difficult due to the ocean of ppl who also want the job. But there are very few actual available positions at any given time. It's super competitive and very stressful. I'd advise ppl to not even try due to these factors and go for a different profession. So once you finally nail the job you've been working towards you want to be treated fairly. Not like some 2nd grade citizen. That applies even more to qa positions, most ppl think qa is nothing more than playing games all day. Boy are you wrong there. QA doesn't nearly get the respect it deserves. Its just as important as the other disciplines. Ppl who say "then don't take the job" often forget that very often, it was the only choice ppl had at the time.

 

[Lun]

Educate yourself. My father is older than my mother. Theres a 28 year age difference. My dad is 91 and grew up the depression era. He fled for the marines when he was 15. My grandparents located him about three months later and brought him back. He then left again at 18 and served four years in the Army. Afterwards he worked construction.

What's so hard to believe about that? Hes currently laid up in my moms house after breaking his back in 2016. I also have to help take care of him on my days off while balancing my personal life and 3 month old son.

This is reality. Life sucks.

Oh and here's a little video for you:

You should become a writer because wow, you have quite an imagination.

 

[Tanno]

After reading this article about this, I'm thinking of boycooting next NRS title untill they give them $20 or more/hour. This is no way to treat your own workers that are working for your own projects that you want to share out to the market.

Shame on NRS bosses. They think they can get away from it. Not even the legal actions will vindicate them. The worker law (dunno what it's named at your place, but I mean that there's a law that protects the workers, as well) can fuck you up, if there are a lot of proof regarding such brutal disrespect towards the workers, like low salary, firing up, blackmailings, etc.

If they keep this up, I hope they close their shop sooner than I'd think so.

Not all companies are this brutal like NRS.

 

[ColdBoreMK23]

You should become a writer because wow, you have quite an imagination.

You're pathetic.

 

[Lun]

You're pathetic.

Now you're letting me down. I just complimented your creative writing skills, and yet all you can come up with is calling me pathetic for doubting your made-up stories?

 

[Lord Snotty]

Shame on Ed Boon. SHAME.

 

[FrankOceansWaifu]

They get away with it because employees come out after the fact.

 

[$500 Shoes & Shades]

 

[bluesdealer]

Shame on NRS.

 

[noonemakesnoise]

This thread has a lot of good examples of how human empathy is completely and utterly broken. Don't even have it in me to be angry anymore, just bummed.

 

[SubZeroIce]

Educate yourself. My father is older than my mother. Theres a 28 year age difference. My dad is 91 and grew up the depression era. He fled for the marines when he was 15. My grandparents located him about three months later and brought him back. He then left again at 18 and served four years in the Army. Afterwards he worked construction.

What's so hard to believe about that? Hes currently laid up in my moms house after breaking his back in 2016. I also have to help take care of him on my days off while balancing my personal life and 3 month old son.

This is reality. Life sucks.

Oh and here's a little video for you:

This is entirely too much info. If your dad is 91 years old than that means you really shouldn't be on a Mortal Kombat forum arguing about this stuff because you have no idea what the working conditions for us younger folk are.

Yes people have horrible jobs, but that doesn't mean it's okay. Stop contributing to the problem. Articles like this are trying to fix toxic work environments. This "Well that's the way it is" mentality is the reason why things will never change. Yes that's the way it is, but it's not how it SHOULD be. It's shocking to me to see so many people advocating for this type of situation when they KNOW it's wrong.

 

[ItsYaBoi]

Sounds like an over dramatic story with a bunch of cry babies. The contracted help should feel blessed to get their foot in the door, and should suck it up when it comes to crunch time. Crying about having to work long hours, this happens in damn near any industry trying to build something new. I'm an electrician who works commercial construction and when the job has dead lines your expected to work long hours. It is not like these hours are forever. Sometimes people get yelled at when shit goes missing or something breaks or to many people don't show up. Your at the bottom of the totem pole, you get the shit work and hours until you have proven yourself. Happens everywhere don't cry about it. Do your work and be humble and maybe you will be a full time employee. Suck it up, if it doesn't apply to you then let it go in one ear and out the other. Those people who get work straight out of school with such a great development studio should feel blessed they get this opportunity. This whole article seems to be a smear piece for a studio we all love, you should be ashamed of yourself. Not to mention your salty sources who don't work there anymore. This kind of thing happens everywhere, if your an adult and don't know this all ready, you have spent to much time in safe spaces. I am done ranting about how disappointing and underwhelming this cry baby article is! Over!

As somebody that worked at one of the biggest games developers in the world on one of the biggest games ever (during crunch), I’d like to sincerely tell you to shut the fuck up. Shut it.

To be fair though, the reason they forced themselves to work all that overtime and didn't talk to bosses about the BS happening with the namecalling and whatnot was directly because they wanted to get a full-time job at NRS. So they're more at fault than anyone. They were naive, they let themselves be used because they wanted to work there and now they're angry because of the abuse they suffered, the abuse they also forced upon themselves.

Nice victim blaming bro. You shouldn’t have to put up with this shit in order to get something as simple as a full time job for fuck sake.

 

[Vslayer]

As somebody that worked at one of the biggest games developers in the world on one of the biggest games ever (during crunch), I’d like to sincerely tell you to shut the fuck up. Shut it.



Nice victim blaming bro. You shouldn’t have to put up with this shit in order to get something as simple as a full time job for fuck sake.

You should open a day care, maybe you could take care of them there, change their diappers and everything.

 

[ItsYaBoi]

You should open a day care, maybe you could take care of them there, change their diappers and everything.

And this now closes the case on you either not being an adult, or being an adult with a severely low IQ.

My guess is the latter personally.

 

[TakeAChance]

So, these people are not making a ton of money, and are barely getting by (working additional overtime just to make ends meet) and some people think it's going to be easy for them to just quit, leave their income, job hunt, interview process, and about a month after being hired to get their first pay cheque?

All the while having a family to support?

I don't think it's just as simple as "just quit" considering they would also give up all forms of social security to do that.