Behind the hot sales of the old man ring, it seems that there is still no escape from the company's cruel exploitation of employees, and this seems to be the law of the game industry in recent years.
Surrounded by full media evaluations, the old ring that players have been looking forward to for many years has caused a sensation in the industry as soon as it was released. Steam's weekly sales list has reached the top, pc version of the game sales are estimated to have exceeded 10 million, domestic and foreign game live broadcast rooms are quickly filled by the old ring, countless anchors in the audience laughter to taste the cycle of life and death.
It can be said that whether it is evaluation, sales, or popularity, the old man ring is the top of the current single-player game market.
The amount of content in this game is substantial, the art scene is magnificent and exquisite, surpassing the game works of the FS Society in previous generations, although the combat system is still flawed, but the flaws are not hidden, Yun Youji still believes that this is a game boutique that players cannot miss in 2022.
However, as the situation faced after the release of "Red Dead Redemption 2", "Cyberpunk 2077" and "The Last Survivor 2", on the one hand, it is highly praised by players and the media, the sales of the game are rising, and on the other hand, there are constant news of development companies squeezing employees.
Because the game is not fun is a very subjective thing, relying on the inspiration of the main creative development, but at the same time the imagination will also be subject to the real technology, development costs, so because of an idea to overturn the redo, because of technology, cost reasons for the content of the castration, in the game development is too common, a game with a large amount of content, the effort behind it is often much more than it seems.
The old man ring body can provide nearly 100 hours of weekly game flow, the amount of large tubes is full (even a little bit of support), but at the end of 2021, the number of FS society employees is only more than 300 people, these three hundred people not only have to develop "Eldon's Law Ring" these years, as well as "Only Wolf" has been released and the third game that has not yet been released, the daily hard work of FS society developers can be imagined.
Recently, foreign media reported that the salary of FS agency is very bad, the problem of employee overtime is also very serious, and there seems to be some unequal treatment of female employees.
Much of this comes from Career Connetion, a Japanese corporate recruitment site that scores out of five, with an average annual income of 3.41 million yen (nearly 180,000 yuan) for employees, and an average annual income of 3.96 million yen (nearly 210,000 yuan) for employees in their twenties, with an average overtime of 40 hours.
In contrast, the average annual income of regular employees in non-development positions in the Japanese game industry is 3 million to 6 million yen (about 150,000 to 300,000 yuan), and the annual salary of regular employees in development (programmer) positions is usually between 3 million and 5 million yen (about 150,000 to 200,000 yuan), while the salaries of employees in FS are basically the lowest in the Japanese game industry.
Some employees who have worked at, or are still working at, FS also commented at the bottom: "In terms of workload, overtime compensation is quite low. The company's natural turnover rate is high. ”
Some female employees also said that the number of women in the company is very small, although there is no problem of sexual harassment in the company now, but many pregnant female employees still choose to leave the company, and the care for female employees seems to be lacking.
The appearance of these news has caused a certain degree of damage to the image of Miyazaki Hidetaka, and in the eyes of some netizens, he has suddenly changed from a ghost game producer to an ugly capitalist who exploits the people at the bottom.
However, if you think about it a little, you will find that there is a big problem with this news.
The first is the source of information, although many of the content of the news comes from the employees of the FS agency on the job search website, but some of it is 12 or 11 years old, most of which is released around 15 years, and in 2018, Japan passed the labor law reform and revised a lot of content.
For example, Japan's new labor law stipulates that the maximum overtime time of enterprises is only 45 hours per month, 360 hours per year, and special circumstances such as busy periods cannot exceed 100 hours per month, and there can be up to six busy periods per year. Judging from the average overtime hours of FS, they have not violated Japanese labor laws, and even the overtime hours should be much less than many companies.
And it should be noted that although the FS society only has more than three hundred people, but their game development a lot of repetitive content is responsible for outsourcing companies, and a lot of content is packaged to the Chinese side of the company, players in the game to see the rocks, buildings, trees, monsters, in fact, are made by Chinese, FS society is often only responsible for some of the more core content, the workload is not as much as we think.
Moreover, even if the above is true, it is inappropriate for the media to make a big news and want to criticize Hidetaka Miyazaki on the issue of employee treatment.
You know, although everyone thinks of Hidetaka Miyazaki when they mention FS Society, they all know that he is the president, but Hidetaka Miyazaki is only the president of FS Society, and the FS Society that is really in charge is President Yoshimi Soda, and Kadokawa Shoten, the parent company of FS Society.
Many people may not understand the difference between the president and the president, if you have to compare with the domestic company, the president is probably equivalent to the chairman of the company, and the president is the CEO, that is, a senior worker.
Although normally the president should be responsible for the internal affairs of the company, because Miyazaki Hidetaka is passionate about game development and is not interested in the management affairs of the company, many of the management work is handled by Kadokawa people, and he himself is fully involved in game creation.
Therefore, Hidetaka Miyazaki will only control and guide the creation of game content, and the labor problems of FS employees may not really have much to do with him.
Taking 10,000 steps back, some domestic netizens compared the salaries and treatment of Japanese employees with China, which is also very unreasonable.
Because Japanese companies have a lifelong employment system and a year-end work sequence system, as long as employees do not make too many mistakes, companies cannot fire employees, and wages will increase year by year, so they do not have to worry about being optimized at the age of 35, and it is not difficult to understand that the salary is lower.
In general, although several countries in Central Asia are very volume, and the game industry is even more volume, this does not mean that FS is a sweatshop, and even if it is, it is by no means just by looking at this news.
However, as a player, the appeal itself is somewhat contrary to the appeal of the game developer, and the player hopes to play the game early, then it is necessary to hope that the game company will speed up the progress of game development and the developer will work overtime.
However, if you think in a different position, you are the same worker, and you don't want the developer to be squeezed by the company, there is a contradiction between the player and the player, especially when you encounter your favorite manufacturer, this contradiction will be even worse.
And this may be the reason why there have been so many recent discussions about the treatment of FS employees.