Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Release Date, Crunch Culture Revealed
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga's release date has finally been confirmed, but it arrives alongside a report on the culture of crunch at development studio TT Games.
Following several delays, the Skywalker Saga is set to be released April 5, 2022, bringing all nine main-line Star Wars films into a single Lego game. There will be over 300 playable characters for players to unlock over the course of the game's main story and bevy of side missions.
It's an ambitious title, and a Polygon report published Thursday shows the toll of that ambition on the developers who made it.
Crunch had been part of the company's culture since its inception in 2005, and many employees attribute that constant churn to the decision to release a new Lego game every year.
"A big problem was that crunch was premeditated," said one former employee. "It wasn't an emergency protocol for when things went wrong. Instead, it was a tool in the box for production; projects were planned with crunch periods in the schedule, or even worse, crunch was the schedule."
Been speaking to current and former employees about the culture at TT Games since last August. They told me more about the challenges of working on Skywalker Saga, the studio's history of crunch and low morale, and the poor treatment of QA staff and women at the studio. https://t.co/gJw50I0jDk
— Jack Yarwood (@JackGYarwood) January 20, 2022
TT Games co-founder and creative director Jon Burton is said to have often yelled at staff to return to their desks when attempting to leave on time, expecting that employees would put in work outside of normal hours. Project leads imitated that behavior, following employees out of the studio to ask why they were leaving and to question their dedication to the project.
Burton stopped handling the day-to-day workings of the studio in 2013, but the culture he instilled remained in place under his successors, studio manager David Dootson (2013-2018) and studio manager and director Paul Flanagan (2018-2020). Several employees told Polygon that 80-100 hour, six-day work weeks were common during crunch periods.
The company had numerous other troubles, including treating QA workers as second-class citizens — they weren't allowed access to other floors of the studio without supervision — sexist treatment of female employees, a gender pay gap and a lack of women in senior roles.
TT has reportedly made a few tentative steps toward improving working conditions at the company, including paying closer attention to and limiting the amount of overtime staff can work. But employee morale remains low.