XBOX GAME STUDIOS BOSS SAYS THERE’S NO MORE CRUNCHING AT BETHESDA

If you don't know crunching is compulsory overtime during the development of a game and can get seriously out of hand when a games launch date is coming up and the the developer still needs to iron out any last minute issues.

Allegations surfaced earlier this month that the development of Fallout 76 was plagued by, among other things, a heavy reliance on crunch(opens in new tab). One source described it as "voluntold overtime," because employees were told that if nobody volunteered to come in to work over a weekend, the entire dev team would be called in.

Overtime isn't completely outlawed, of course, but Booty said that it shouldn't be part of the mandatory production schedule. Employees who do feel pressured to crunch can report it to Xbox's human resources department, or to support groups at individual studios. "There’s avenues for them to report that anonymously back to us that goes through HR," he said. "We have to rely on those independent systems of checks and balances."

Let's hope the outdated culture of 'Crunch' becomes a thing of the past and workers are either volunteering to do paid overtime or the studios just give themseleves more time to produce and release a game.