Bandai Namco’s Barcelona based Mobile studio will transition to a four-day workweek following similar changes in the industry.
Bandai Namco has announced in a post that it is trialling a four-day long week for all staff members. The trial will last for six months, and during this time, Fridays will not be considered workdays, while staff salaries and benefits will remain unchanged. (via Eurogamer)
The post said that “Work-life balance has always been a priority for us and since the beginning of our studio, we have empowered our teams to strike the right balance between their professional and private life based on their unique needs thanks to unlimited holidays, hybrid working, and no set working hours.”
The post continues, “trialling the move to the four-day workweek is the next logical step for us to continue striving to reduce stress, increase creativity and enable our teams to do their very best work. This model has shown significant mental health improvements and a reduction of mental health days off by employees, as an industry that has close links with burn-out, wellbeing is a top priority for us and has been a key factor in us adopting this change.”
The announcement comes after many developers have spoken about crunch within the games industry. Most recently, staff at TT Games have shared the situation within the company while finishing the upcoming LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.
A former employee at TT Games said that “a big problem was that crunch was premeditated. 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.”
