How Game Publishers Buy Crunch Overseas 

As a Malaysian in the industry, I've heard about these stories of Lemon Sky for many years now. It's good that it's finally getting some form of international coverage. Thanks for making it more visible.

I worked with lemonsky for 2 years, and this video speaks eveything.

I'm 1 of ex-worker in Lemonsky. It was very harsh and underpaid, and OT is simply part of our normal working hour. The worse project i handled give me a total depression and i almost commit suicide because of it. Monday to sunday 8am to 12 am or more. If u don't OT they will start blame u over and over. And No OT payment at all! When i sign the contract the boss says "Expect OT btw, it's not much and also we won't pay OT salaries"

Glad to see my patreon money supporting not just you, but local voice actors, especially when covering important subjects like this. Keep up the good work!

It's been mentioned by a couple of folks already here, but just want to add on how I really appreciate using Malaysians and Indonesians for the voiceover. Hearing authentic Malay and Indonesian accents like these really do help to give life to these accounts, I was a bit stunned hearing those because as an Indonesian I was like, hey, I recognize these kinds of voices!

I appreciate that you got voice-over artists to read the comments from different countries. As someone originally from Singapore, hearing South East Asian voices really helps to ground what's being described in that specific region. I also appreciate your reporting on this topic in the first place. There was a good talk at least year's Game Devs of Color Expo by Shana T. Bryant about "No More Heroes: How Game Development Heroics is Killing Us". The talk described how The Game Developers' Conference has an annual report where data is collected from thousands of game devs. When they asked about quality of life, the report concluded that "game development [is] an industry driven by young workers who tend to depart within a decade." So that's an average career of only 10 years - and probably less for marginalised individuals who also deal with systemic inequalities. In fact only a third of devs remain in the industry for 10 years or more. That's 2/3s attrition within a decade! Watching your video, it's easy to see how that happens, and how outsourcing crunch means its bad effects may land on exactly the kind of devs that could be helping the industry live up to its goals of being more inclusive, more diverse.

Wan Hazmer, game designer on Final Fantasy XV and now the head of Metronomik Studios, has talked a lot about the fact that, if you want to get into the game industry in Malaysia, your only real career path is to join one of the many outsourcing studios. I never really considered that before I heard him talk about it, but I'm excited that he (and people like him) are beginning to create their own studios that publish their own games so folks in those countries have more options.

You should also call out the local art schools in Malaysia like for example TOA, that ships them to Lemonsky with great promises and awesome workplace. This is a well known fact locally that the Lemonsky CEOs were TOA graduates and also alumni members. The fresh batch of lambs to the slaughter are always passionate students.

One thing about crunch culture and 'sweatshop'-like companies that's rarely mentioned when it comes to Eastern countries is how conservative tradition pretty much supports it. Look at Japan and its infamous office culture. Since _working_ in itself is very diginified, anything less is looked down upon and any cost you bear is seen as a noble sacrifice. Add to that a struggling, 'developing' economy, then there's no wonder sweatshops are so pervasive in some countries and seemingly no pushback comes from the government. As a Malaysian, I thank you for bringing light to an issue we rarely talk about ourselves and hopefully we can find a solution in the near future.

The quote "Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life" doesn't works well here..

The saddest part is how some companies outsource labor and STILL have horrible crunch. How awful at management do you have to be to pull that off?

I really, really appreciate that you hired local voice artists to read their testimonials. Not a necessary aspect on coverage like this but it's a connection point to give these voices life. I work in the game industry. I am luckier than many of these because I was paid OT but I witnessed firsthand (and still do) how studios use contract gigs to 'test' candidates - less pay, no benefits, no commitment to keep an employee around after a cycle. I was again lucky enough to get brought on full time. I have also seen our studios utilise third-party studios to pay less for capacity increases to fund development and even then, our local discussion was always displeased with the quality of work that was received - I can only imagine it's due to how mismanaged and overworked these third-party developers were, given unrealistic expectations and deadlines, without proper compensation along the way. I got into this industry to get into a field I was interested. I'm not there yet and I'm getting pretty burned out along the way.

Malaysian who has worked in another studio with similar practices as Lemonsky's mentioned in the video, in my own personal experience I've also worked public holidays with promise of replacement holidays that never came. That's just one of many more issues. This problem is quite widespread here, it's not just Lemonsky, this is important. There are smaller studios practicing what they do with even less benefits. Quite commonly a lot of these studios are started by graduates from the same school, mentioned in one of the comments here. It feels like it might be something that's taught and normalized, which is not good. A lot of artists are afraid to say anything and I wish we could unionize and get more help.

It was such a wonderful move to hire local voice actors for those interviews. It really captured the experience accurately without incriminating those former employees' identities. Thanks for shining this light.

Thank you for a very well done video. Just to shed some more light, Malaysian labour law (at the last time I checked) only makes it mandatory to provide overtime for jobs that pay under 2000 ringgit monthly. Once you go above that, overtime pays are entirely voluntary and at the employer's discretion. That's why most employers would start fresh grads at around RM2200-3000, because on paper it looks like better starting pay than RM1800. But once you factor in the overtime, then their real entitlement would be closer to RM2800 to 4000. On paper it's also illegal to mandate 7-day work weeks, but again, in reality, it's always deemed as it's done 'voluntarily'. The last job I held before the pandemic was with a very reputable company, and I was working 7 days a week, and only had 2-3 rest days during my first two months. I was so burned out then that I tendered my resignation after my second month. Only then did they offer to return me to a 5-day work week if I would retract my resignation. Just to add however, crunch time in the IT industry is nothing new. It's only become a thing because Western games developers have been making news with crunch time burnouts. However, outside of games, it's been like this pretty much forever. Try being in IT support of a bank in Southeast Asia, even Singapore for example. I had a friend who worked in Barclays Singapore, and in order to meet him, I'd have to tell him a week in advance so he can plan to take an hour away from work. I too cut my teeth preparing projects for exhibition launches and whatnot. It's not uncommon to go without sleep, or running on just a few hours for several days straight. The experience permanently damaged my nervous system, and I started developing minor but involuntary muscle tics and spasms after.

Honestly, I'm genuinely impressed by the lengths you went to for the quotes from Lemon Sky. Voice modulators would have been an easy fix, but hiring voice actors? Incredible.

Speaking as someone who worked in game development 20 years ago in a couple of Malaysian studios, nothing has changed, except it seems to have gotten worse - bigger and more exploitative.

Really good video, important work right there! A little note though: When talking about a foreign salary, it would make sense to also give the mean and/or average salary in that country, rather than a conversion into US dollars, as that would give more context IMHO.

Real journalism, real investigation. Thank you for making this and advocating for workers!

This was eye opening, triple A artists are always praised for the cutting edge animations, while we didn't even know it's a team of 200 malaysians dude breaking themselves for this.

I am going to say this as both a gamer, and a consumer. I'm going to stop purchasing freshly released games that rely on crunch, in house or outsourced. I don't NEED games, I choose them as my hobby. I can wait for them to be out several months before buying, when they come down in price, or just find something else to do. I will vote with my wallet, since that's what will actually change anything. Also, besides the unpaid hours and the horrible strain of being so focused on a job that you only go home to bathe, the thing that boils my blood the most is the blatant gaslighting and accusations that these hard-working folk suffer, no matter what company is crunching them. Remembering that they're paid just as much as someone working in any minium wage job with actual hours and holidays, makes it so much worse. Minimum wage jobs are already minimum wage because no-one wants to do them, right? And crunch culture makes it sound like it's some sort of grand privilege to be a part of a thing that makes you hate your passion by abusing your perfectionist nature or preying on how badly you want to stand out as an artist. It's awful. I really want to see this change...

It's amazing that you cover this issue here in Malaysia. Outsourcing can be done in a better and more humane way because there are studios who manage to do it. More coverage on issues like this will help create awareness and hopefully make changes in the industry. Good stuff!

Unionization is so important right now. Many people use the fact that people willing to crunch even exist as justification for it's existence, but in reality even if that population only constitutes a small percentage of workers in the industry it still stops skilled professionals from bargaining for better wages or decent schedules. If everyone demands better conditions together then companies can't just hire new naive staff to abuse for a few more years. I'm confident better working conditions don't stop anyone from making great games (look at supergiant games) but even if they did i would still sacrifice slightly shorter release dates for a better industry.

The name for one of the things happening here is "generational reestructuring of the work force". Every year people get out of the industry and younger people get in. the older work force is not there to guide, to shed light on the exploitation. when the developer told his parents, they knew he was being exploited because their generation went through it and learned. Younger people are usually more aligned with the neoliberal ideology when they enter the labour market and therefore do not see labour's class division. They are more suceptable to exploitation because they believe the market lies about a bright future and at the same time strongly feel the dread of unemployment.

Thanks for covering the SEA games industry! ♥ A lot of people forget what a big role they play on the games industry as a whole and also how their Indie Games (scene? Industry?) is rapidly growing & creating some amazing games atm!!

Incredible investigation here, I learned answers to question I didn't even know I had!

Thank you for pointing out the issues with the Malaysian company! They're a very big deal here and everyone in the industry knows them. I have friends working there now and they confirm it's like that for most of the studio. Can also read about it on Glassdoor. It's been like that since almost a decade ago. Rm3000-5000 is actually decent average art studio wage in Malaysia! But considering some of those studios are earning USD, I can see where the extra money is being pocketed

yo friend of mine sent me video to this, thanks for reporting on the topic! I myself work in Lemon Sky and I can confirm everything is true that's been reported, (altho I wasn't too sure what happened in Brandoville, quite out of my range until this video) I believe the most fked up thing in LSA is the culture of "OT = Good = Promotion = Acknowledgement; no OT = 'do you really care'/'you not working hard enough' I'm not afraid to show myself so feel free to ask, if anyone wants

that indonesian company brandonville reflecting the indonesian corporate culture, "we're one big (toxic) family!"

A 16 year veteran south-east asian game developer here. In my experience, outsourcing to south-east asia has always been seen as a cheap way to move products along faster. But as someone who has worked with these studios, I can say that the amount of problems created by the lack of good management on their end usually nullifies any possible positive effect on the development cycle (that they try very hard to pitch to their cousin studios). Because they employ mainly junior roles from fresh graduates in countries where the education system pumps out very unskilled, under-trained workers that can be manipulated to doing lackey work for a few years as you've pointed out. I think a lot of the blame is with the educational institutions and the manipulative way they have cheated people into the non-existent industries in south east asia, and then because they have nowhere else to go they stick around until they inevitably see no hope in it.

i agree that lemon sky is not good cause my brother used to work there and always get home late

I work in VFX and good lord how familiar that sounded. I don't even do much outsource. This is the practice all around. So thank you for making this video. I love supporting you guys on Patreon specifically because of content like this. In the words of another, there's gotta be a better way than this Babylon system.

I remember punching in at 9am and leaving at around 12am-1am almost everyday working at lemonsky

This was a great video and really shined a light somewhere it's needed. The group message in the video was so incredibly toxic and manipulative. I couldn't imagine receiving a message like that knowing that my job relied on me staying in this person's good graces, and it really sucks to know that they're in charge of scores of people.

Greetings from Malaysia, and thank you for bringing up Lemon Sky to the eyes of the world, both for their good and bad. Heard so many stories about this company, that makes you both amazed and concerned about them.

I can still remember when I was still a fresh graduate, one of first question asked by the interviewer of Lemonsky was : "Are you willing to work overtime?". That still haunts me today

Awesome video, thank you for covering this very important topic! And I really loved that you hired voice actors from the respective countries.

Great video! I work in an industry with a lot of crunch and overseas crunch. Really appreciate you giving the artists support like this! A lot of these studios make more than enough to pay staff properly.

Supergiant games made hades with no crunch hell, which is very cool.

Fantastic video, this was super fascinating. Overseas work definitely deserves to be brought up in all crunch conversations.

What’s more intriguing is this is not just for video game companies. You can find similar behaviour in giant tech operations across the same locations you have mentioned in the video. It’s the saddest truth of our “modern” age.

I think the root of this problem comes from education, most colleges and universities charge more than 100k+ fees for each course that is been thought by fresh graduate tutors with no industry experience, and then the next batch of fresh graduates have literally zero knowledge, so they end up spending 2 years worth of OT to learn what they should have learned back in college just to catch up with the industry. I mean some people studied in an English college and can't even make an English sentence! College/University in Malaysia is nothing but business, and they are the main problem.

A BIG THANK YOU! for creating this video. It is almost like voicing out for all the artists in outsourcing studio. Really heartbreaking when i see young and passionate artists just broke down and burn out every time... Hope this can really bring about a change.

Currently studying game development degree and this is such an eye-opening revelation to me. Thank you.

Remember Rockstar Games and the infamous RDR2 crunch? Rockstar has a studio in India of roughly 500 people that they purchased and renamed Rockstar India and they were a support studio for RDR2. Given the horrible stories we heard about crunch at the main studio, I have to wonder how bad it got at Rockstar India.

What a fantastic report! And to pay local voice over talent to protect anonymity of your sources is so doubly ethical, I can't even express how impressed I'm with you! Keep this up.

You folks are doing life changing work! Really appreciate these videos.

another really interesting and important video from you guys!! there are a lot of problems with the work culture in the video game industry including crunch, I’m glad that more workplaces are unionising and putting pressure on game companies to reduce crunch time

Thank you for bringing up a serious and overlooked topic in the industry. You thoroughly go through the topic with a lot of sources and helped artists remain anonymous so they don't compromise their careers and even got local voice over actors to read the quotes. The amount of time and care shines in the quality of your video and as someone who will be graduating soon and trying to get into this industry, this is a very important topic to be aware of and informed about. Thank you.

Thank you for making this, this really needs to be talked about a lot more.

7:58 squeezed like a fresh lemon! More and more "Successful company" started to surface in SEA, but most of them are led by emotionless, manipulative psychopaths that actually have no qualms to squeeze their employees dry...

The problem is definitely industry wide. This video speaks to my exact experience at one of the biggest (and publicly traded) mobile gaming companies in the US. I worked 1000 hours of overtime two years in a row before burning out super hard. I quit and moved to a new company where I was paid 80% more while working half as much.

Thank you for bringing light to this growing exploitation of labor for games. I really loved how your team works hard to make sustainable and responsible content that's also informative and often very fun. Maybe it wasn't fun this time, but the stories you tell here are important!

Incredibly well made video. Good research, good presentation, good arguments well organized and presented. And of course an important topic. Congrats!

thank you for this video, extremely important! the voice actors are a great touch

This is incredible work. Hopefully this video gets as much attention as a Schrier article. Excellent research, and I love that you hired local interpreters.

My friend went to brandoville for a month and it is exactly like what is described in the video. Worked a lot of unpaid overtime and on weekdays too until he fell sick. Good thing he's already out of there. "hell on earth" yeah can't be more accurate

Quality journalism done ethically which is informative, relavent and concise. Always a pleasure.

This is a very very important video that gamer should see. As gamers, people who pay those companies money, it’s part of our responsibility to ensure the wellbeing and good health of everyone who makes our games. We need to ensure that the money we pay doesn’t contribute to the harm of those who sacrifice so much of their time for our entertainment.

Thanks for the insightful video Chris. It's a real problem that is getting worse and worse. In the media industry it's become the norm. This past year with covid has shown that if you won't crunch and show a finished product you'll be replaced by someone else who's a lot cheaper or even if you're an essential staff you'll be laid off after the product is completed rather than furloughed from my own, friends and colleagues experiences.

Excellent video mate, and kudos to anyone else who helped on this project.

This is an incredible video PMG Team - your videos just keep getting better and better!

I'm working in game dev for over 10 years now. The companies I worked in got a lot better with time - better conditions, less OT. At fist we were given extra days worked would be given as extra payed leave. Evening stays were not payed at all. Some positions (like QA) had payed OT, but the base salary was so low they had to OT a lot to get decent money. A few years later and in another company OT was payed 1.5 times, and in the last year I have not done overtime at all. I think the entire industry is slowly improving, as it matures. Studios in Malaysia and Indonesia are obviously newer to the business than Blizzard/EA and the rest. They are in countries that are much more permissive of exploitation, and there are much fewer places for a new artist to work. I think as time moves on conditions there will improve as well. But you need a large industry, so they not only compete among themselves for contracts, but compete among themselves for workers. Only then things get better.

I predict increased growth in subscribers, your videos are so professional and have the kind of journalistic integrity that makes journalism look GOOD for once. I don't think I will ever stop respecting you for how you handled the interview with Athene. As many others have said, I especially liked the touch of getting Malaysian and Indonesian voice actors in for this - it shows you care about these people more than just a story but real respect to understand your voice alone can't do them justice. You have my trust as a viewer :)

i recently started watching this channel, gotta say I was truly impressed by the investigative work put into this video and sort of look forward to watching every video you've ever made. thank you for the brilliant insight

Thank you so much for making these important videos!

Thank you very much for your hard work. I have never seen one video that convince by itself to become a patron.

Really excellent, important video - thanks for highlighting this issue

Incredible work as always. I'm so glad you are one of those bringing these issues in the gaming industries to light. 'Hope Labour', I haven't heard a term that has made me so sad and angry at the same time for a long while. I'd hate to imagine how many other sectors use this level of manipulation that utterly ruins aspiring talent.

Incredibly important work, thank you!

Great vid, boosting for the algorithm! I never realized that when a game says made in US/Japan/etc. that it's (potentially) only telling a fraction of the production's story.

Another stellar report! Well done to the whole team!

Thank you for this video. There are some truly amazing artists and talent in SEAsia, on par with the greats of any AAA company. They deserve way better, and I hope they can stand to make their own content that will rock the world, like Metronomik did with No Straight Roads, which is a huge step for the gaming industry in Malaysia!

Props for properly crediting the voice actors. It's so easy for studios to forget people while crediting, even if the result literally wouldn't be the same without them.

Awesome reporting! Thanks for talking about an under represented side of game development!

solid piece of journalism. Thanks for making this.

16:57 'Exploiting Passion'. That just sum up the experience of working in any outsource company here in Malaysia. I have friend and previous colleague that went to work in outsourcing company (more specially in the animation industry). All of them come in with hope on the prospect of working their 'dream job' and just grinding countless hours into the work because of their passion on the project but unfortunately long unpredictable hours , no promotion opportunity and minimum wages lead to a complete burnout. Factories at least follow the labour law and any staff that work beyond required will be pay for their overtime contribution. These companies exploited a loophole in the labour law that they have never give any official order's for the staff to work overtime so they have zero obligation to pay them.

Spectacular work as always

Dont forget avg salary for them are myr 2000 to 3000 also converted as less than 500usd after tax.

Well researched and the 'small' stuff like graphics of the maps really add and contextualize the content, since it IS about other countries. Also adding in I appreciate the local voice actors!

Thanks for another great video. I'd definitely be interested in seeing a video that explores game studios that do well without having to resort to crunch as a companion piece to prove that it isn't needed to make good games, even though it seems like many people think otherwise.

Fantastic work Chris and co for shining a light on something not often mentioned as the spotlight for crunch is usually on the US and Europe. I fear that in the near future these companies won't actually change for the better, just relocate more of the crunch further eastwards so the more people talking about this the better. Keep up the good work!

Great work as usual from you guys

I work for a major biotech company as a manufacturing technician. Almost all OT is voluntary. Occasional OT is expected. All OT performed by hourly workers is paid time-and-a-half. The fact that voluntary OT is left unpaid frankly disgusts me.

Great work, team and good work Chris on getting all those multiple game names out in a row so quickly without getting tongue tied

I love this channel so much.

This was one of the reasons I decided to change careers. I realized I wanted a more secure job that allowed hours to do things in my life. And this isn't just artists. Programmers are treated like this as well. And the funny thing is that the knowledge they need for this industry is paid so low compared to other ones. It makes me sad.

I'm not in the video game industry but watching this was still hard for me because it reminds me of my first job as an engineer where the company culture was you're either take OT everyday or seen as a lazy person and no, most of my OT wasn't paid either because its "voluntary". 72 hours, 6 days a week, come in daily just to get verbally abused during meetings. I remember once my superior told me my job is to get yelled at and good luck trying to find a better working environment because this is just how the industry works. Everyday I'd go to work thinking I'm better of dead. I left the job with depression and no confidence for my ability in engineering. I'm also from Malaysia and I feel like this is not an issue exclusive to game studios but more like a nationwide work culture issue

This video needs a lot more views. Good work as always Bratterz.

Brilliant games journalism. I really hope this gets the coverage and recognition it deserves.

I personally know some of the people who worked in those SEA studios, and it's heartbreaking to see them break down and burn out. I can only hope that this video would bring another light into the issue, and the studios would change for the better, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Fantastic investigative journalism. Keep up the good work.

thanks so much for making this video

Fantastic work and video, profoundly saddening and terrifyingly unsurprising.

Brilliant stuff as usual Chris.

This is People Make Games in a nutshell. Great video!

As someone who works in the industry, I really hope this video gets more attention and eventually leads to changes to this toxic crunch culture.

this is some of the best reporting on games i have ever seen. great job by everyone involved

Wow this is some great journalism. Quality reporting.

Wow that's such an important video! I just wish there was more journalism like this in the games industry.