GamesIndustry.biz spoke to a number of FromSoftware employees, past and present, to better understand how the issues raised affect those who work at the studio on a day-to-day basis. What you need to know is that the company does not allow employees to give interviews, whether or not they are still employed at FromSoftware; the reason why all the speakers wished to remain anonymous. Unsurprisingly, we learn that FromSoftware uses crunch, a technique that studios are now trying to minimize as much as possible in order to make life more pleasant for its employees, but also to avoid making headlines. What emerges overall is that studio staff often have to contend with excessive overtime and chronic dissatisfaction with compensation. To begin with, some interviewees wanted to refute the clichés that the Japanese are used to not counting their working hours.
Although standard working hours at FromSoftware are 8 hours a day, it is obviously not uncommon for employees to arrive earlier or finish later at night, especially during periods before the game’s release. Generally, the crunch is subject to overtime, at FromSoftware, all of this is “included in the salary”, which means that there is no valuation for having exceeded its standard hours. Several interviewees admit that there is “a certain level of burnout” within the studio. This seems to vary from department to department, and each employee obviously has a different schedule depending on the tasks assigned to them. “There hasn’t been a lot of overtime for me” advances one of the witnesses in this case, while another declares a difference experience: “During critical periods of game releases, I often had to work early in the morning and work overtime for two to three months”, before to add that the crunch is not daily, but linked to key moments in the production of the game. The only concern, the interviewees specify that these overtime hours are “generally included in the salary”, except for times when they worked after midnight. “We were paid late night overtime, but it was half our usual hourly rate”explains one of them.
Just to keep things simple, one of the employees explains that unlike other companies, FromSoftware is “not a big company”, despite the fact that the studio now has 349 employees. According to data obtained via Career Connection, a FromSoftware employee can expect an average salary of 3.41 million yen, the equivalent of less than $25,000 a year, which is approximately $2,083. (gross) per month, which is significantly less than the annual 5.2 million yen ($38,000 – $3,166 gross per month) of Atlus employees. GamesIndustry.biz clarifies that these calculations were made with current exchange rates, as the Japanese Yen has fallen significantly against the dollar over the past two years). Compared to the cost of living in Tokyo, one of the employees said that “From Software’s salary is not adequate” and for comparison, Salary Explorer reports that the average monthly salary in Japanese game development ranges from 231 ¥000 ($1,675) to ¥735,000 ($5,328). By comparison, recent hires advertised by From Software all start “from ¥220,000, or $1,595 per month. When you consider that an average monthly rent in Tokyo is charged ¥203,730 ($1,477) apartment with one bedroom and living room, difficult to be satisfied with the salaries offered by the studio.
With the rise in wages in companies like Capcom, Bandai Namco or even Koei Tecmo, FromSoftware therefore appears to be a company that has not yet considered the well-being of its employees, especially with the success of Elden Ring, publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment announced last February that it would raise salaries “by an average of ¥50,000 ($362) per month for all of its employees. In addition, basic monthly salaries would increase” 232,000¥ ($1,681) to 290,000¥ ($2,101). FromSoftware looked like part of Dark Souls. “It’s a bit tense somewhere. There’s a lot of struggle for things to evolve in the right direction, with conditioning to overcome the hardships.” Nice analogy.