If you’ve been waiting for the Destiny 2 update, you’ll have to wait a bit longer. But while patches get delayed all the time, this Destiny 2 patch delay is a bit different. Instead of bugs, this delay was for a more human reason: to prevent its developers from having to undergo crunch.
During Bungie’s GuardianCon 2019 charity live stream, Creative Director Luke Smith stated that they were not rushing a much awaited patch to avoid crunch. As such, the patch will now arrive sometime later, possibly in July.
“We could take the patch off the… off the ‘patch factory,’ more or less, and ask people to work super long [hours] and add this thing in,” stated Smith. “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 upcoming patch addresses the Lord of Wolves burst-fire shotgun. The gun’s signature perk allows the it to temporarily double the amount of bullets it spits out. It used to activate only after players scored a kill. However, a recent change to the game allowed players to activate this perk at will.
Recently, the video game industry has come under scrutiny for the practice of crunch, thanks to developers speaking out. This practice sees development teams undergo arduous overtime during development.
In response to this, some companies have made statements that they would try to address the issue and reduce crunch. One such company is Sega that made a commitment to reduce the amount of crunch in their studios last year. Meanwhile, Nintendo confirmed that it has also delayed Animal Crossing: New Horizons to avoid crunch. Respawn even talked about not crunching to rush out Apex Legends updates.
Bungie’s actions then make it part of a small but growing group of companies now taking a look at the issue of crunch in video game development, and working to address it.
