As video game publishers are increasingly exposed for poor work practices, companies looking to change the status quo have become more vocal about their efforts to avoid so-called “crunch,” which describes a situation where developers are pushed past reasonable expectations in order to meet deadlines. Bungie has now joined other companies in taking a stand against overworking developers. It recently shared in a livestream that the upcoming Destiny 2 patch would be taking a bit longer because the team wants to treat its developers better.
GamesIndustry.biz reported that a Bungie developer responded to a question about a patch for a weapon fix by sharing that it’s taking some time because the studio wants to preserve a good work-life balance for its employees.
“We could take the patch off the … off the ‘patch factory’, more or less, and ask people to work superlong [hours] and add this thing in,” he said. “We’re having the conversation about, is it worth doing that? Or is it worth preserving work-life balance and ship it later, in July?”
The developer even admitted that the team recently worked longer hours on a contest modifier for one of the Destiny 2 raids, and said they didn’t want to ask the team to do that back-to-back. That realization sullies the attempt to treat the developers better in this latest instance but, considering the many reports of crunch around the industry, this gradual shift is likely the reality for many studios aiming to make the change. Bungie parted ways with Activision recently and is able to make decisions like this without the pressure of a massive publisher bearing down on it.
Games that garner critical acclaim like Red Dead Redemption 2 have been reported to be created under crunch conditions. On the other end of the scale, Anthem has been critically panned, even though the team behind it reportedly suffered under the same conditions. Despite sporadic looks into efforts that provide better work experiences for game developers, it’s still necessary that other solutions be considered. Things like unionization could be analyzed so that better practices are implemented across the entire industry, as opposed to the infrequent occurrences that we’re currently seeing.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.