An interview with ZeniMax Online Studio’s Rich Lambert has regrettably confirmed that there is indeed some crunch that occurs while developing and updating Elder Scrolls Online.
The matter of crunch came up during the interview as discussion moved to the chaotic development of Fallout 76. “There is some – that’s part of game development,” said Lambert. “Towards the end, there is some but for the most part there isn’t any. We don’t do sympathy crunch, where if one person has to work, everybody works. We don’t do that, we leave it up to the teams.”
With that said, Lambert does recognize that the task of stopping crunch falls on upper management. “We have to manage our expectations with what the team can physically produce. We rely a lot on the team to say ‘Hey, if you want that, it’s either going to mean we cut this or we’re going to have to work overtime’ and we always try to find a way to not have overtime,” he says in the piece. “As managers, we’ve come to realize that just because we want something doesn’t mean we should do it.”
These statements from Lambert align with plans laid out by Matt Firor at the end of last year, when he admitted that ZOS would be pulling back on development slightly in the interest of keeping workers and their families healthy.
In other ESO news, a hotfix to address the Tales of Tribute bug should already be available to NA and EU megaservers today. This hotfix does regrettably reset players’ ranks to a point just before Update 35 went live, but ideally things should be back to normal in that respect.
