Elka Lux, a spokeswoman for Epic confirmed to The Verge that hundreds of temporary testers will be eligible for Epic Games U.S. employee benefits and will be employed full-time directly by Epic Games. It appears that all staff will be hired directly and covered by Epic Games’ plans to hire full-time traveling workers, but Elka Luks said she will continue to hire traveling workers for short-term needs.
An internal Epic Games memo, which The Verge obtained independently, states that Epic Games will be hiring full-time volunteers on seconded employees from the United States, with many of the offers coming in April 2022. A note to employees said that Epic Games will offer “optional full-time work for eligible U.S. temporary workers,” with many of those offers effective “as of April 4, 2022.”
The studio did not have additional information about other types of temporary workers (other than QA testers) that they would hire, and did not specify which workers are excluded from the offer. Epic spokeswoman Elka Lux did not provide any further information about what other types of work units (with the exception of quality control labs) Epic Games will hire, and did not specify which workers are excluded from hiring.
Some people will not be offered jobs because “there are certain circumstances in which it makes sense for both an employee and Epic Games to maintain conditional employee status,” the document says. The news that Epic will offer a full-time job with benefits to a large group of contractors based in the United States marks a major step forward in this fight. The studio’s announcement that it will offer full-time contracts to hundreds of contractors, hundreds of contractors comes in the context of a broader industry that is experiencing intense (at best) tension between large firms and their employees. research.
Quality control testers and other workers are currently employed through temporary agencies such as Eastridge, Hays, and Nextaff. Developer portfolio expanded to include QA testers and other “qualified” contract staff. Elka Lux, a spokeswoman for Epic, said The Fortnite Creator will hire “several hundred” contractors, of whom “most, but not all” will be Quality Assurance (QA) testers.
The hiring of the U.S. contingent comes at a time of heightened tensions between workers and the big game development studios. Not to mention this is a huge step towards improving working conditions for QA testers and other staff. Epic’s decision to turn its contractors into full-time employees comes amid tensions between employees and major game studios. Workers in the video game industry have had a pretty hard life lately. Massive workforce insecurity is making game industry workers feel insecure about their jobs. The gaming industry is notorious for the (sometimes unpaid) periods called “crunches” where workers work incredibly long hours, and Epic is no exception. Starting last year, the company ended their’ COVID-era policy of giving workers a day off every Friday, upsetting employees who claim the extra time is beneficial.
