The new Call of Duty, announced this week, will gross billions of dollars. But some of its developers are treated like second-class citizens — no bonuses, no vacation, and salaries barely over minimum wage. The video game industry has a contractor problem: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Game companies say they use contractors to fill temporary jobs or to rotate people in and out of projects as needed. But at some studios, contractors wind up staying for years, strung along by the hope of full-time employment as they struggle to make a living wage.
At Microsoft, contractors can only work for 18 months max. (They can then come back after a six-month break.) Microsoft uses so many contractors that this limit leads to a lot of attrition — and for games that take 4+ years to make, like Halo Infinite, it has been disruptive
