The investors already knew what happen to the victims, and they no longer suppirt Brandoville and begin to help the victims. That's the main reason why that studio closed down.
@@Akunf-d2h I heard the polices already took this case and trying to find her and Ken Lai. But Jeremy should be arrested too since he also her slave and part of Christa's blackmail.
Hi, I'm Han from PSM. A few of us are planning to organise a panel of Malaysian developers to discuss Crunch and Workplace Culture in the Malaysian Game Developer Community. Would you be interested to be part of the panel or would you know anybody who would be interested? Thank you!
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"
Sorry to hear that man, I was in London in the mid 1990s and half fancied going into developing for video games, I ended up in multimedia instead on some editing software and it sucked balls, so I then decided to get into investment banking as a developer and it sucked balls, terrible places. So I decide that all I cared about was the money as the people were awful and job security was non existent so I became a CONTRACT investment banking developer in IT and it was the right and only good move. I earned 3 times as much as I did as permanent and if they sacked me or I couldn't stand the place then I could leave with no problems in searching for my new role... thankfully it turned out fine and I didn't get that many problems with colleagues. I made my money, left and I am focusing on video games rght now having a great time as an indie developer. Don't let them get u down.
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.
Ah, thanks for sharing, I'm really curious about your experience. I'm in the animation industry in europe and these crunch situations seem to vary a lot from studio to studio. What's it like in Malaysia, more in general? Is Lemon Sky typical of the kind of work you can find, or are there better companies to work for?
@@g.m.9180 There are studios like lemon sky, there are others that are better, it's a case by case scenario, but at least from what I've heard, they are trying to improve
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!
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.
Dont apologize for their garbage work on Reforge. These companies work on the worst part of the game asset and half ass all of them, they dont have the skill and competence to do the job. Its full of racist chinese who want to take jobs more than they can handle so they can put their people inside. Then they slowly corrupt the organization and turn a company like Blizzard into a racist evil company of sex abusers.
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!
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.
That's true to some extent but not entirely. For art related position that's definitely one of the many options but for programming jobs, it's going to be slightly more difficult since almost every studio here exclusively does art.
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.
@mandak kart It is not unrelated. It is for the glory of social justice! Everyone should work under these circumstances not only outsourced studios. It shows that we do not have to get paid or live well to do great work. That is what wonderful socialism show us! It is revolutionizing!
@mandak kart No, snap out of it. And i dont talk, i write. If you can not notice the difference how am i to know if you are not trolling? Stop being emotional.
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.
I'm graduate of TOA. They've got no qualms with sending out graduates to suffer, since we were more or less tortured during our college years. We used to joke that the initials stood for Thousands of Assignments.
no local art academies there produce graduates to be sent to any companies, not even TOA,the choice is given to the graduate to apply to the company and position they want, trouble is before graduation there was never much sharing about career talk, career path or much networking until final year
please do another version of this since a lot more evidence has surfaced and also about the art / games industry in south east asia in general! love your take on this situation!
Just found out about the Brandoville abuse. Wtf is up with that Cherry lady? Is she not right in the head or something? No sane person would ever say the things she had said to her employees.
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.
Finally got the recognition it deserved. Was part of brandoville from 2020 early to mid 2021. 1 year+ was enough to experience all the drama and the vile nature of the high upper management in this studio and i was but a meek freshmen. Fortunately aside from the horrible boss and her horrible policies and treatment, the people in there were nice and supportive. Im glad i get to know these people and get to call them my friends. But maybe thats because we all share the same strees and trauma in that place lmfao
@@NeroZeroes only the core team members, the admin/management teams because they report directly to her. us artists mostly deal with her husband kenlai but as time goes on she starts meddling in as well, but because we dont directly report to her us artists formed a pretty good bond and shared our stress together
@@TheProxy2 when you worked under ken, is there any misconduct ever happened like with cherry? i'm totally baffled the fact that he let this slide. and im not sure we heard enough about him in this whole BV shenanigans
@@efemji no ken is a pretty much chill individual. Hes even pretty supportive to artists providing free training videos and the way he talks to us are as if we're equals. Stark difference from his wife. However as time goes he went more and more corrupted by his wife, as he tends to listen to anything she says and without even thinking twice. He agrees to cherry's absolutely absurd rules and tells the employees to listen to her, and he starts giving more payload to artists outside our jobdesk. We believe that he got too comfy with all the money and power he has that he lost sight of what truly matters as an artist himself
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.
Yea the worst part is that crunch doesn't even work, you drain employees so much that quality isn't really there and don't expect any creativity either In the end i feel like this mess is the combination of company greed and immature impatience from young consumers, 50/50
@@frostyspikes7589 young consumers have always been impatient but they didnt ask for updates after updates back then (unless the released game is downright broken). Companies have always had all the power to create an environment in which more "reasonable" drip of content are the norm. They chose to exploit the impatience instead. First to get an upper hand over the competition, now it's practically mandatory.
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.
Unionization is it's own problem especially for developers, this kind of skilled labor results in people who are far better and far worse than average and those that are better don't want to be paid the same.
The problem is Malaysia rarely has any industry unionization formed, nobody has the willingness to take the lead or knowing the concept of "Unionization"
@@CeleryMan666 Unions only have to be what the workers want them to be. If anything mediocre developers getting paid for overtime and having vacation time will allow more important devs to ask: "why don't i have better benefits?". And more importantly anyone who is considered essential enough to be an employee regardless of experience deserves to be paid for their extra work. Unions aren't perfect and that should be known, but i don't think this specific concern has enough merit. I really welcome the discussion tho, it's important to talk about these things.
@@use2regis Same with Indonesia. Someone did tried, but the lack of support killed it. Especially with company keep rotating using graduates, and education institution keep supplying them without thinking the wellfare of their students / alumni. All I know that school / college only care is their reputation.
Union always work well on US or maybe some country on Europe but not on SEA especially Indonesia because high member union at Indonesia are f@ck peoples that only care their own pocket.
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.
Hi, I'm Han from PSM. Thanks for sharing your experience. I think I damaged my nervous system as well working at a language centre, but meditation seems to be helping. I'm organising a panel of Malaysian developers to discuss Crunch and Workplace Culture in the Malaysian Game Developer Community. Would you be interested to be part of the panel or would you know anybody who would be interested? Thank you!
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.
i went for an interview with them once, and met the production manager, he kinda indirectly gave me the look down on you feeling, i felt abit shady about him
Hi, I'm Han from PSM. A few of us are planning to organise a panel of Malaysian developers to discuss Crunch and Workplace Culture in the Malaysian Game Developer Community. I was wondering would you be interested to be part of the panel or would you know anybody who would be interested? Thank you!
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.
@@thechugg4372 Indie companies can be even more exploitative. Your boss could be a guy who wants to succeed at all costs and expects you to do that for him. Don't be deluded into thinking that they'll treat you better. And in the end your job will indeed depend on the success of your company, so you'll feel the need to work harder.
Consistently you'll find that those that are doing what they love is exactly the kind of person who gets taken advantage of at the promise of getting closer to their dream. Those with hopes and goals get abused the most.
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...
mad respect. I've stopped buying games from companies I've done zero research on. if they want my money, they'll have to earn it by treating ppl right (and making good games)
@@ghostware6057 Agreed. Besides, crunch has also proven to be more prone to countless mistakes and really buggy, rushed projects in the long term that damage the parent company's reputation. Crunch might save a few dollars short term, but it is damaging to everyone involved long term for sure.
Same here, I haven't payed for games that have had crunch for years now. Last game I bought was Stardew Valley, and that was all made by one guy. I dont know if I will buy any more games from Chucklefish (the publisher) though because they were accused of exploiting free labor by Starbound devs and responded pretty poorly as a result... Shame because their Witchbrook game looks right up my ally, but those recent accusations make me uneasy. Especially since they claim to be a 'no crunch studio'
@@weakspirit_ this is a thing mostly done on PC, right? I largely play on consoles but if there was anything like that going on in the console world I'd love to support it
'I will vote with my wallet, since that's what will actually change anything' hahahahaha good one! yessir, all you have to do is change your spending habits and things will change. go 'vote with your wallet', because that's fixed so many problems, yeah?
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.
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.
Malaysian here. RM2000-3000 is not low, but not very high either. Most people if comparing it to many other industries will probably consider it as "somewhat low" though.
@@fishy4374 the thing is, in my perception, being an artist, an animator, those are skills that should be well paid, not just averagely paid... and then crunch on top? Maybe my perception is wrong, but man...
@@Crowbar dw I also agree that these artist should be paid A LOT more, but the sad reality in life is that crunch exists on top of underpay and unpaid overtime 😔
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!
@@NikoJr. still, not for those at the top. they can still find ways to make more money for themselves even if the company goes under. in fact, when the companies go under they wont suffer at all while all the employees are deeply hurt
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!!
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
After knowing the truth about the work conditions of being a concept artist/game developer in Malaysia, it really disappoints me how most of them r really getting exploited for their talents. Since u already have some experience in the game industry field, do you still suggest fresh graduates to continue pursue game artists and developers as their careers in Malaysia? Or is it best for them to find another job field and keep their talents as a hobby instead?
@@celestialx8 ahha well its not just LSA, lots n lots of other companies are also in the same culture but yes definitely needs some voicing out for the health of the industry too
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
Cherry and Ken Lai has been reported to police in Indonesia but they already fled the country. Indonesia police and its labor law system is bad af. Hope they can be reported in another country too so they get punishment they deserve. Also, beware of LAILAI studio, its their new venture.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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 :)
They have a great policy towards time off and ensuring that workers don't overwork. I do wonder if their policies can be replicated when you get into 100+ employee companies.
@@Q269 Animal Crossing had to be delayed due to crunch and while the players wanted it sooner, they weren’t pressuring them. Meanwhile, pokemon fans kept on asking for the next region and, well, sword and shield. Definitely crunching at gamefreak.
@@CinnamonMuffinz I think it's more about the scope of the game you try to produce. Supergiant never makes huge games and they still probably use some outsourcing to help with stuff like localization and/or QA. So in the end if they never crunch it doesn't mean that nobody from the outsourcing studios also doesn't
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.
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...
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
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 is incredible work. Hopefully this video gets as much attention as a Schrier article. Excellent research, and I love that you hired local interpreters.
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 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.
I want to thank you for this incredible investigation that exposes this toxic work culture. It happens to alot of other companies, it was called 'standard' according to them. This investigation is what I hope will bring a new step for the industry to change, to be more humane and appreciative to workers.
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.
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.
This really seems to run parallel with the VFX industry. I live in a middle-eastern country and I used to work at a VFX vendor that worked with Netflix and Disney+. Our average was 60 hours a week and sometimes we had 90 hour crunch weeks that lasted months on end and this was pretty much the norm over here. I used to occasionally get sick during these crunches and had all sorts of issues related to a weakened immune system. There's so much unseen labor going on behind all the big productions. I really don't think many people understand how big these projects really are and how much labor they require. There are hundreds if not thousands of people working on a single title at any given time, very much like a traditional factory producing consumer goods round the clock.
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!
Well, that is the cycle of capitalism: >An industry is born with a good wage in a 1st world country >The job market get saturated and people start working more for less >People unionize and fight for better work conditions >Eventually the get better conditions so the company start outsourcing >people in the first world country lose their jobs and people in third world countries work in even worse work conditions then before
Worked in SEA for some time. I dont disagree with anything thats been put forth in the video. Its pretty spot on. You always see gamers and games media talk about the big companies like Naughty Dog or CDProjekt but its nice to have someone actually speak out about some of the issues faced by artists from low income nations who in most cases are the ones actually creating the assets for a majority of any given AAA game.
This is why when I was asked "are you not working Saturday?" at my salaried software engineer job I said, "Are you paying me more? If no, then no." This is exactly what you must say in the US by the way. If they say no, still expect you to do it, you don't do it, and then get fired you were fired illegally for refusing to work unpaid overtime. Know your worth, know he law, do not let a company bully you. That salary is for 40 hours per week (check your actual employment paperwork, it will specific expected hours per week) and and hour over 40 is illegal if unpaid after being told or asked to do it. If it's illegal you have no obligation to do it and they legally can't fire you for it. Document the request as well so they can't claim they fired you for some other reason. Edit: and do note, I'm aware this video isn't about the US but the same problem exists in the US where we have a chance to fight back. (See Activision Blizzard v Employees lawsuits for example). You need to fight your employer because they are not your friend. They want to fuck you as hard as they can to make as much money off you as they can.
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.
As Indonesian myself, your work hours in your contract is 08:00 to 16:00, 6 days a week. But if you go home on that exact 16:00, it's a shame for you , although your colleague/employer won't say anything ,but you're expected to go home 1 hour late at minimum. And with that new omnibus law, something worse still not coming yet. Story of success people in my country, always told that they are have so little time for themselves so they are succeed, they work till morning,they work so hard, etc, me myself didn't believe all that success story, people often exaggerated their own success, that's just nature.
@@joMan1060 its have everything to do with omnibus law because these kind of practice will be legalize under the new law in the future, company can hire and extend contract worker without any necessity to make them permanent worker anymore, which can hampering contract worker future.
@@bpcgos dude i game industry ...without that omnibuslaw ...is already like that, who got permanent job in game industry ..all contract ..... i think you get wrong version of that law
@@joMan1060 thats what Im talking about, its already a dirty little secret in gaming industry, it would not be a secret anymore once the law starts to kicked in, it could be a legal practice, not just in gaming, but in all sector
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.
im by no means an expert on stuff like this but it feels like theres some bias against game development as an actual job :^( at the very least though im glad that youre in a good work situation, its always really cool to see people with some really interesting jobs just out and about in the forest of youtube comments
Good video, ive always known animation is heavily outsourced but never knew how bad it is. And using Malaysians and Indonesians for the VO is a nice touch
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!
The crunch culture is also a fundamental part of art schools, the amount of people with anxiety and depression was unbelievable, we were pushed to do crazy amount of work with the excuse being that the more we have to do the more we will get done. And at the time I thought it was normal because everyone is on board with it. Our teachers and supervisors would push on those not spending extra hours on the projects and use the emotional card as a weapon. "Maybe you aren't passionate enough" or "look at your teammates how much they work..."
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.
Brandoville's abuse has always been known in Indonesia but the proof of abuse has finally surfaced after their closure and its terrifying
The investors already knew what happen to the victims, and they no longer suppirt Brandoville and begin to help the victims. That's the main reason why that studio closed down.
I think with so much evidence of abuse, Cherry Lai can be considered a criminal and the police should arrest her.
HAHA I remember those days in animation college where even the professors advise against us entering that studio 🤣🤣🤣 it's THAT bad
@@Akunf-d2h I heard the polices already took this case and trying to find her and Ken Lai. But Jeremy should be arrested too since he also her slave and part of Christa's blackmail.
@@hasamahikaru i didn't remember exactly but i do remember one of my lecturers were hesitant on saying the name brandoville lmao
I worked with lemonsky for 2 years, and this video speaks eveything.
Ya Same here, whoever work there is not about triple a games portfolio but have to cosinder the pay and time flexible
I heard you have to be 5min 11am to office or 1/2 day salary cut.
🧡
Hi, I'm Han from PSM.
A few of us are planning to organise a panel of Malaysian developers to discuss Crunch and Workplace Culture in the Malaysian Game Developer Community. Would you be interested to be part of the panel or would you know anybody who would be interested?
Thank you!
Lmao
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"
Sorry to hear that man, I was in London in the mid 1990s and half fancied going into developing for video games, I ended up in multimedia instead on some editing software and it sucked balls, so I then decided to get into investment banking as a developer and it sucked balls, terrible places. So I decide that all I cared about was the money as the people were awful and job security was non existent so I became a CONTRACT investment banking developer in IT and it was the right and only good move. I earned 3 times as much as I did as permanent and if they sacked me or I couldn't stand the place then I could leave with no problems in searching for my new role... thankfully it turned out fine and I didn't get that many problems with colleagues. I made my money, left and I am focusing on video games rght now having a great time as an indie developer. Don't let them get u down.
Thank you for sharing your story. I'm glad you're still here with us
Holy fuck. 8am to 12am is just when I'm awake for the day. It's so inhumane to make someone work so long.
What in the fuck is wrong with game developers
@@iCore7Gaming outsourcing for minimum pay with super tight schedule. Take it or leave it.
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.
Ah, thanks for sharing, I'm really curious about your experience. I'm in the animation industry in europe and these crunch situations seem to vary a lot from studio to studio. What's it like in Malaysia, more in general? Is Lemon Sky typical of the kind of work you can find, or are there better companies to work for?
@@g.m.9180 There are studios like lemon sky, there are others that are better, it's a case by case scenario, but at least from what I've heard, they are trying to improve
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!
Thanks so much, Tim! Like I said at the end of the video, Patreon is the biggest reason we're able to keep going. You are the wind beneath our wings
100% agree so great to get voice actors of the same nationality as the people they portray.
I one-hundred percent agree; hearing them connected me to the situation much more than I would have been otherwise.
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.
such an interesting and thoughtful comment!!
Yeah ,thanks for that,Chris.
Yeah I appreciated that as well
@@realgrilledsushi I don't know what you mean, the salaries are incredibly diverse /s
Dont apologize for their garbage work on Reforge. These companies work on the worst part of the game asset and half ass all of them, they dont have the skill and competence to do the job. Its full of racist chinese who want to take jobs more than they can handle so they can put their people inside. Then they slowly corrupt the organization and turn a company like Blizzard into a racist evil company of sex abusers.
the story continued, there has been whistleblower for the latest situation in Brandoville studio revealed even worse things that happened inside...
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!
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.
hope malaysia will have more local IP.. Metronomik looks like the best for now
That's true to some extent but not entirely. For art related position that's definitely one of the many options but for programming jobs, it's going to be slightly more difficult since almost every studio here exclusively does art.
I feel the same. If I had to join the game industry, I'd likely try to join the indie studios we have than studios that do jobs for AAA companies.
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 collective is much more important than indviduals. Long live socialism!
@mandak kart
It is not unrelated. It is for the glory of social justice! Everyone should work under these circumstances not only outsourced studios. It shows that we do not have to get paid or live well to do great work. That is what wonderful socialism show us! It is revolutionizing!
@mandak kart
No. America is evil capitalism. How can you be so arrogant.
@mandak kart
Just because you disagree with my opinion does not make me a troll.
@mandak kart
No, snap out of it. And i dont talk, i write. If you can not notice the difference how am i to know if you are not trolling?
Stop being emotional.
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.
They are so call brainwash
agree. TOA needs to take a stance on this and protect their graduates. there is a difference between employability and exploitation
I'm graduate of TOA. They've got no qualms with sending out graduates to suffer, since we were more or less tortured during our college years. We used to joke that the initials stood for Thousands of Assignments.
no local art academies there produce graduates to be sent to any companies, not even TOA,the choice is given to the graduate to apply to the company and position they want, trouble is before graduation there was never much sharing about career talk, career path or much networking until final year
@@unreal684 Rather than physically and legally. It's more like mentally. You're pressured by your peers.
please do another version of this since a lot more evidence has surfaced and also about the art / games industry in south east asia in general! love your take on this situation!
This matters is viral-ing again in Indonesia, but this time with full proofs and facts.
Please make another video about this again.
Just found out about the Brandoville abuse. Wtf is up with that Cherry lady? Is she not right in the head or something? No sane person would ever say the things she had said to her employees.
she's allegedly taking hard drugs
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.
Finally got the recognition it deserved. Was part of brandoville from 2020 early to mid 2021. 1 year+ was enough to experience all the drama and the vile nature of the high upper management in this studio and i was but a meek freshmen. Fortunately aside from the horrible boss and her horrible policies and treatment, the people in there were nice and supportive. Im glad i get to know these people and get to call them my friends. But maybe thats because we all share the same strees and trauma in that place lmfao
amazing you still get friend when according to the story, that "girl boss" actively trying to ruin everyone relationship
@@NeroZeroes only the core team members, the admin/management teams because they report directly to her. us artists mostly deal with her husband kenlai but as time goes on she starts meddling in as well, but because we dont directly report to her us artists formed a pretty good bond and shared our stress together
@@TheProxy2 when you worked under ken, is there any misconduct ever happened like with cherry? i'm totally baffled the fact that he let this slide. and im not sure we heard enough about him in this whole BV shenanigans
@@efemji no ken is a pretty much chill individual. Hes even pretty supportive to artists providing free training videos and the way he talks to us are as if we're equals. Stark difference from his wife. However as time goes he went more and more corrupted by his wife, as he tends to listen to anything she says and without even thinking twice. He agrees to cherry's absolutely absurd rules and tells the employees to listen to her, and he starts giving more payload to artists outside our jobdesk.
We believe that he got too comfy with all the money and power he has that he lost sight of what truly matters as an artist himself
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.
yeah as a malaysian it resonates very well with me hearing it with the local accent
Yea the worst part is that crunch doesn't even work, you drain employees so much that quality isn't really there and don't expect any creativity either
In the end i feel like this mess is the combination of company greed and immature impatience from young consumers, 50/50
@@frostyspikes7589 young consumers have always been impatient but they didnt ask for updates after updates back then (unless the released game is downright broken). Companies have always had all the power to create an environment in which more "reasonable" drip of content are the norm.
They chose to exploit the impatience instead. First to get an upper hand over the competition, now it's practically mandatory.
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.
Unionization is it's own problem especially for developers, this kind of skilled labor results in people who are far better and far worse than average and those that are better don't want to be paid the same.
The problem is Malaysia rarely has any industry unionization formed, nobody has the willingness to take the lead or knowing the concept of "Unionization"
@@CeleryMan666 Unions only have to be what the workers want them to be. If anything mediocre developers getting paid for overtime and having vacation time will allow more important devs to ask: "why don't i have better benefits?". And more importantly anyone who is considered essential enough to be an employee regardless of experience deserves to be paid for their extra work.
Unions aren't perfect and that should be known, but i don't think this specific concern has enough merit. I really welcome the discussion tho, it's important to talk about these things.
@@use2regis Same with Indonesia. Someone did tried, but the lack of support killed it. Especially with company keep rotating using graduates, and education institution keep supplying them without thinking the wellfare of their students / alumni. All I know that school / college only care is their reputation.
Union always work well on US or maybe some country on Europe but not on SEA especially Indonesia because high member union at Indonesia are f@ck peoples that only care their own pocket.
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.
Hi, I'm Han from PSM. Thanks for sharing your experience. I think I damaged my nervous system as well working at a language centre, but meditation seems to be helping.
I'm organising a panel of Malaysian developers to discuss Crunch and Workplace Culture in the Malaysian Game Developer Community. Would you be interested to be part of the panel or would you know anybody who would be interested?
Thank you!
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.
i went for an interview with them once, and met the production manager, he kinda indirectly gave me the look down on you feeling, i felt abit shady about him
Hi, I'm Han from PSM.
A few of us are planning to organise a panel of Malaysian developers to discuss Crunch and Workplace Culture in the Malaysian Game Developer Community. I was wondering would you be interested to be part of the panel or would you know anybody who would be interested?
Thank you!
Real journalism, real investigation. Thank you for making this and advocating for workers!
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.
How is this legal????? This culture in the gaming industry is making me abandon my dreams of working with games one day
@@j0hn00arthur Just work for indies man, indies can truly show their visions with their own sweat.
@@thechugg4372 true
I heard about rates companies offer there... Idk how it is possible to live with this money.
@@thechugg4372 Indie companies can be even more exploitative. Your boss could be a guy who wants to succeed at all costs and expects you to do that for him. Don't be deluded into thinking that they'll treat you better. And in the end your job will indeed depend on the success of your company, so you'll feel the need to work harder.
The quote "Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life" doesn't works well here..
No, it never does in any work whatsoever. None.
@@albertamalachi3560 That's correct.
i dont know if that statement was ever true
Whoever said that never worked with something they loved.
Consistently you'll find that those that are doing what they love is exactly the kind of person who gets taken advantage of at the promise of getting closer to their dream. Those with hopes and goals get abused the most.
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...
mad respect. I've stopped buying games from companies I've done zero research on. if they want my money, they'll have to earn it by treating ppl right (and making good games)
@@ghostware6057 Agreed. Besides, crunch has also proven to be more prone to countless mistakes and really buggy, rushed projects in the long term that damage the parent company's reputation. Crunch might save a few dollars short term, but it is damaging to everyone involved long term for sure.
Same here, I haven't payed for games that have had crunch for years now. Last game I bought was Stardew Valley, and that was all made by one guy. I dont know if I will buy any more games from Chucklefish (the publisher) though because they were accused of exploiting free labor by Starbound devs and responded pretty poorly as a result... Shame because their Witchbrook game looks right up my ally, but those recent accusations make me uneasy. Especially since they claim to be a 'no crunch studio'
@@weakspirit_ this is a thing mostly done on PC, right? I largely play on consoles but if there was anything like that going on in the console world I'd love to support it
'I will vote with my wallet, since that's what will actually change anything'
hahahahaha good one!
yessir, all you have to do is change your spending habits and things will change. go 'vote with your wallet', because that's fixed so many problems, yeah?
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.
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.
This was I was thinking as well.
Malaysian here. RM2000-3000 is not low, but not very high either. Most people if comparing it to many other industries will probably consider it as "somewhat low" though.
indonesian minimum wage is around 5 million IDR/month
@@fishy4374 the thing is, in my perception, being an artist, an animator, those are skills that should be well paid, not just averagely paid... and then crunch on top? Maybe my perception is wrong, but man...
@@Crowbar dw I also agree that these artist should be paid A LOT more, but the sad reality in life is that crunch exists on top of underpay and unpaid overtime 😔
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!
hi siew hong
Hi Theo and Siew Hong.
Hi WeeLim and Theophilus
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?
@Lind Morn Short-term profit, sure. But crunch has very bad long-term effects, such as those on employee retention, company reputation, etc.
@@NikoJr. still, not for those at the top. they can still find ways to make more money for themselves even if the company goes under. in fact, when the companies go under they wont suffer at all while all the employees are deeply hurt
@@NikoJr.They don't care as long as they can rebrand that company over and over again.
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!!
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
Hey man, I am same line with u 😇 we should voice out to lemonsky. Wth r u doing
How long have you been working in the gaming industry?
After knowing the truth about the work conditions of being a concept artist/game developer in Malaysia, it really disappoints me how most of them r really getting exploited for their talents.
Since u already have some experience in the game industry field, do you still suggest fresh graduates to continue pursue game artists and developers as their careers in Malaysia? Or is it best for them to find another job field and keep their talents as a hobby instead?
@@CaptainVKanth been in the company for about 4+ years now
@@celestialx8 ahha well its not just LSA, lots n lots of other companies are also in the same culture but yes definitely needs some voicing out for the health of the industry too
Incredible investigation here, I learned answers to question I didn't even know I had!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Make your one studio and pay fair wages
@@regieegseg8588 That's an incredibly risky and expensive project that most people can't attempt without pre-existing wealth
@@regieegseg8588 that's the problem when no law stops the exploitation you cannot compete price wise with a company that basically has slaves.
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.
Currently studying game development degree and this is such an eye-opening revelation to me. Thank you.
locally? KDU ,MMU or maybe other higher learning institution?
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.
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 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.
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.
Fantastic video, this was super fascinating. Overseas work definitely deserves to be brought up in all crunch conversations.
Aging like fine wine
i agree that lemon sky is not good cause my brother used to work there and always get home late
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.
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.
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.
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 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
its still main question till now, not just Lemonsky but to all arts and entertainment industry.
At least it wasn't sprung up on you unexpectedly after joining
Cherry and Ken Lai has been reported to police in Indonesia but they already fled the country. Indonesia police and its labor law system is bad af. Hope they can be reported in another country too so they get punishment they deserve. Also, beware of LAILAI studio, its their new venture.
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.
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 remember punching in at 9am and leaving at around 12am-1am almost everyday working at lemonsky
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!
that indonesian company brandonville reflecting the indonesian corporate culture, "we're one big (toxic) family!"
Omg, 3 year later, my comment aged well as brandonville studio allegedly abused its employees 🤬
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
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.
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.
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 :)
Supergiant games made hades with no crunch hell, which is very cool.
they took the hell out of development and put it in the game
@@christophersantos7607 It’s a hell of a rougelike.
They have a great policy towards time off and ensuring that workers don't overwork. I do wonder if their policies can be replicated when you get into 100+ employee companies.
@@Q269 Animal Crossing had to be delayed due to crunch and while the players wanted it sooner, they weren’t pressuring them. Meanwhile, pokemon fans kept on asking for the next region and, well, sword and shield. Definitely crunching at gamefreak.
@@CinnamonMuffinz I think it's more about the scope of the game you try to produce. Supergiant never makes huge games and they still probably use some outsourcing to help with stuff like localization and/or QA. So in the end if they never crunch it doesn't mean that nobody from the outsourcing studios also doesn't
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.
Incredibly well made video. Good research, good presentation, good arguments well organized and presented. And of course an important topic. Congrats!
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...
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
I hope a lot of people will watch this.
This is gonna be a huge topic in indie dev scene in Indonesia.
There is an indie dev scene in Indonesia?
Is it big or at least growing?
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
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.
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.
Dont forget avg salary for them are myr 2000 to 3000 also converted as less than 500usd after tax.
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.
Quality journalism done ethically which is informative, relavent and concise. Always a pleasure.
I want to thank you for this incredible investigation that exposes this toxic work culture. It happens to alot of other companies, it was called 'standard' according to them. This investigation is what I hope will bring a new step for the industry to change, to be more humane and appreciative to workers.
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.
This is an incredible video PMG Team - your videos just keep getting better and better!
You folks are doing life changing work! Really appreciate these videos.
Wow that's such an important video! I just wish there was more journalism like this in the games industry.
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.
This really seems to run parallel with the VFX industry. I live in a middle-eastern country and I used to work at a VFX vendor that worked with Netflix and Disney+. Our average was 60 hours a week and sometimes we had 90 hour crunch weeks that lasted months on end and this was pretty much the norm over here. I used to occasionally get sick during these crunches and had all sorts of issues related to a weakened immune system. There's so much unseen labor going on behind all the big productions. I really don't think many people understand how big these projects really are and how much labor they require. There are hundreds if not thousands of people working on a single title at any given time, very much like a traditional factory producing consumer goods round the clock.
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!
Well, that is the cycle of capitalism:
>An industry is born with a good wage in a 1st world country
>The job market get saturated and people start working more for less
>People unionize and fight for better work conditions
>Eventually the get better conditions so the company start outsourcing
>people in the first world country lose their jobs and people in third world countries work in even worse work conditions then before
Excellent video mate, and kudos to anyone else who helped on this project.
Worked in SEA for some time. I dont disagree with anything thats been put forth in the video. Its pretty spot on. You always see gamers and games media talk about the big companies like Naughty Dog or CDProjekt but its nice to have someone actually speak out about some of the issues faced by artists from low income nations who in most cases are the ones actually creating the assets for a majority of any given AAA game.
This is why when I was asked "are you not working Saturday?" at my salaried software engineer job I said, "Are you paying me more? If no, then no."
This is exactly what you must say in the US by the way. If they say no, still expect you to do it, you don't do it, and then get fired you were fired illegally for refusing to work unpaid overtime. Know your worth, know he law, do not let a company bully you. That salary is for 40 hours per week (check your actual employment paperwork, it will specific expected hours per week) and and hour over 40 is illegal if unpaid after being told or asked to do it. If it's illegal you have no obligation to do it and they legally can't fire you for it. Document the request as well so they can't claim they fired you for some other reason.
Edit: and do note, I'm aware this video isn't about the US but the same problem exists in the US where we have a chance to fight back. (See Activision Blizzard v Employees lawsuits for example). You need to fight your employer because they are not your friend. They want to fuck you as hard as they can to make as much money off you as they can.
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.
Thank you for making this, this really needs to be talked about a lot more.
Awesome reporting! Thanks for talking about an under represented side of game development!
Chris being one of the only journalists in the industry.
excuse me, what about Jason Schreier?
@@wojciechszuber776 I said, "one of."
@@nathandts3401 oh yeah, sorry I misread
@@wojciechszuber776 All good.
"we need those valuable free samples"
As Indonesian myself, your work hours in your contract is 08:00 to 16:00, 6 days a week. But if you go home on that exact 16:00, it's a shame for you , although your colleague/employer won't say anything ,but you're expected to go home 1 hour late at minimum. And with that new omnibus law, something worse still not coming yet.
Story of success people in my country, always told that they are have so little time for themselves so they are succeed, they work till morning,they work so hard, etc, me myself didn't believe all that success story, people often exaggerated their own success, that's just nature.
Thats nothing to do with omnibus law
@@joMan1060 its have everything to do with omnibus law because these kind of practice will be legalize under the new law in the future, company can hire and extend contract worker without any necessity to make them permanent worker anymore, which can hampering contract worker future.
@@bpcgos dude i game industry ...without that omnibuslaw ...is already like that, who got permanent job in game industry ..all contract ..... i think you get wrong version of that law
@@joMan1060 thats what Im talking about, its already a dirty little secret in gaming industry, it would not be a secret anymore once the law starts to kicked in, it could be a legal practice, not just in gaming, but in all sector
@@joMan1060 which game company?
This is People Make Games in a nutshell. Great video!
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.
im by no means an expert on stuff like this but it feels like theres some bias against game development as an actual job :^(
at the very least though im glad that youre in a good work situation, its always really cool to see people with some really interesting jobs just out and about in the forest of youtube comments
Good video, ive always known animation is heavily outsourced but never knew how bad it is.
And using Malaysians and Indonesians for the VO is a nice touch
Great work, team and good work Chris on getting all those multiple game names out in a row so quickly without getting tongue tied
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!
The crunch culture is also a fundamental part of art schools, the amount of people with anxiety and depression was unbelievable, we were pushed to do crazy amount of work with the excuse being that the more we have to do the more we will get done. And at the time I thought it was normal because everyone is on board with it. Our teachers and supervisors would push on those not spending extra hours on the projects and use the emotional card as a weapon. "Maybe you aren't passionate enough" or "look at your teammates how much they work..."
PMG is my favorite youtube channel to get an update from.
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.