Read from Gameinformer and Polygon:
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga got an April 5 release date this week after spending years in development limbo. For a while, it seemed like the project was in peril, and, according to a new report by Polygon, those fears appear to have merit. The outlet talked to 30 current and former employees of TT Games (speaking anonymously out of fear of retaliation) who revealed TT’s lifetime history of crunch, a negative workplace atmosphere, and how The Skywalker Saga’s development suffered from it.
The report highlights that after TT struck gold with its early Lego titles during the mid-2000s, it became a victim of its own success. The studio’s annual release cadence meant that overtime and crunch became not only normal but expected. Polygon’s sources described instances of studio leadership berating employees for taking breaks and questioning their commitment to the company. Some say working 80-100 hours six days a week was not uncommon. Other problems highlighted in the report include a gender wage gap for female employees and the lack of women in leadership or diversity in general. Women who spoke to Polygon also reported experiencing bullying and harassment. Though some leaders listened to employee feedback regarding these issues over the years, significant change never occurred.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga served as the tipping point for these long-standing problems. The game has been in the works for five years, and those who spoke to Polygon say a major reason was the adoption of an unstable new proprietary engine, NTT. This engine became a bane to employees due to it missing key features and a difficult learning curve, thus lengthening production. But to avoid paying licensing fees for Unreal Engine (which TT’s employees campaigned to use instead), management stuck with NTT, which became the breaking point for frustrated employees who departed the studio.
“It was a very soft-spoken blackmail,” one former employee says. “‘If people don’t start doing overtime, there’s going to be problems,’” although the problems were never specified.
“A big problem was that crunch was premeditated,” says one former employee who worked at the studio under Burton. “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. [...] It was a regular occurrence because of the type of games we made: movie tie-ins, and kids’ stocking fillers. They all had deadlines dictated by a holiday event or the release of some film.”
“Jon told us [during a presentation] he was going to ‘hit the reset button’ in response to the survey results, and try to start fresh,” says a former employee. “He started by dropping some of the odd rules we had at the studio — disabling the internet firewall, and allowing people to answer phones at their desks — but nothing meaningful that addressed project timelines, low salaries, or the crunch culture. It was back to business as usual the following Monday.”
Reached for comment, Burton sent the following statement: “I can’t respond to these points as I have continuing obligations to TT that I don’t want to risk breaking (for example - confidentiality and non-disparagement).
“I can clarify a couple of things for you though. I founded the company [Traveller’s Tales] in 1989 and was owner of the company [TT Games] until I sold it to WB in 2007. I moved to California in 2013, at which point my job title first changed to Creative Executive, and then later to Creative Executive Advisor, and as you can imagine, any insight into the day to day running of the studio ended when I moved.”
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga got an April 5 release date this week after spending years in development limbo. For a while, it seemed like the project was in peril, and, according to a new report by Polygon, those fears appear to have merit. The outlet talked to 30 current and former employees of TT Games (speaking anonymously out of fear of retaliation) who revealed TT’s lifetime history of crunch, a negative workplace atmosphere, and how The Skywalker Saga’s development suffered from it.
The report highlights that after TT struck gold with its early Lego titles during the mid-2000s, it became a victim of its own success. The studio’s annual release cadence meant that overtime and crunch became not only normal but expected. Polygon’s sources described instances of studio leadership berating employees for taking breaks and questioning their commitment to the company. Some say working 80-100 hours six days a week was not uncommon. Other problems highlighted in the report include a gender wage gap for female employees and the lack of women in leadership or diversity in general. Women who spoke to Polygon also reported experiencing bullying and harassment. Though some leaders listened to employee feedback regarding these issues over the years, significant change never occurred.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga served as the tipping point for these long-standing problems. The game has been in the works for five years, and those who spoke to Polygon say a major reason was the adoption of an unstable new proprietary engine, NTT. This engine became a bane to employees due to it missing key features and a difficult learning curve, thus lengthening production. But to avoid paying licensing fees for Unreal Engine (which TT’s employees campaigned to use instead), management stuck with NTT, which became the breaking point for frustrated employees who departed the studio.
“It was a very soft-spoken blackmail,” one former employee says. “‘If people don’t start doing overtime, there’s going to be problems,’” although the problems were never specified.
“A big problem was that crunch was premeditated,” says one former employee who worked at the studio under Burton. “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. [...] It was a regular occurrence because of the type of games we made: movie tie-ins, and kids’ stocking fillers. They all had deadlines dictated by a holiday event or the release of some film.”
“Jon told us [during a presentation] he was going to ‘hit the reset button’ in response to the survey results, and try to start fresh,” says a former employee. “He started by dropping some of the odd rules we had at the studio — disabling the internet firewall, and allowing people to answer phones at their desks — but nothing meaningful that addressed project timelines, low salaries, or the crunch culture. It was back to business as usual the following Monday.”
Reached for comment, Burton sent the following statement: “I can’t respond to these points as I have continuing obligations to TT that I don’t want to risk breaking (for example - confidentiality and non-disparagement).
“I can clarify a couple of things for you though. I founded the company [Traveller’s Tales] in 1989 and was owner of the company [TT Games] until I sold it to WB in 2007. I moved to California in 2013, at which point my job title first changed to Creative Executive, and then later to Creative Executive Advisor, and as you can imagine, any insight into the day to day running of the studio ended when I moved.”
