Eidos-Montréal and its subsidiary Eidos-Sherbrooke are switching to a four-day workweek, the game developer announced on Thursday. The Square Enix-owned company is currently working on the next big Marvel video game adaptation, Guardians of the Galaxy.
“This initiative is another step towards the embodiment of the studio’s values, building a healthy, creative, and sustainable work environment for our employees,” studio head David Anfossi writes in the company’s blog. “The idea is not to condense the working hours into four days, but rather to review our ways of doing things and our quality time invested, with the aim of working better!”
Eidos-Montréal says that both studios will be closed on Fridays in the next few weeks, “without changing the working conditions currently in place nor the salaries of employees, thus switching from the 40-hour week to 32-hour.” The company isn’t entirely clear on how it plans to adapt to the new structure but suggests one change would be implementing shorter meetings.
Reexamining work schedules and work-from-home policies have been a welcome change brought on by the pandemic. In the context of the video game industry, it’s notable because of how frequently employees are expected or forced to overwork themselves to hit deadlines. There’s no guarantee a shorter workweek will prevent crunch from happening, but it does at least bake in more time when workers can expect to rest.
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