I recently came across a report on abuse in the games industry which inspired me to tell my own story. While the abuse I encountered wasn’t directed at me, it was still surprising to encounter. I had thought that this was a unique experience, but after having heard others talk about it, I’m not so sure.
Finding Skysoul
I lived in Shanghai for eleven years, during which I worked for several video game companies. After the first company I worked for, 2K China, was closed down I started looking for a new position. I wanted to stay in Shanghai, so naturally I looked around for a local company.
I found it easier to get interviews now I was living in China. After a few rounds with several companies, I settled on an outsourcing company that was looking for a Lead Programmer. At 2K China I was a Senior Programmer, but I had effectively taken on the role of a Lead so it seemed a good fit.
Although it seemed to start out well enough, the longer I worked for the company the more I learned about the darkness hidden within.
Working atSkysoul
The CEO of Skysoul was an Australian with roots in Hong Kong. I didn’t learn until later, but the head of HR was the CEO’s wife, something which would cause conflict down the line. When I was hired, the company was working on a mobile game called Monsters on the Run: Smash and Go.
They had two programmers working on the game. These would be my direct reports. They were extremely good at what they did, knowing Unity and mobile games in and out. We would be developing using Macs, something I wasn’t used to as a Windows developer, but I could adapt.
Also on the team were two other expats: an animator and a technical artist. I would befriend these two very quickly, and we would be found drinking our way through Shanghai’s bars any time we weren’t working.
In China there is a concept known as 996: working 9am until 9pm 6 days a week. This company didn’t adopt that policy, but they would constantly insist on overtime and try to get us to work weekends. Unpaid, of course.
This would be something I would push back on a lot. China actually has some of the best worker’s protections in the world, but many companies rely on people either not knowing, or not caring about these rights. Knowing these rights, I was able to protect myself for the most part, but they still insisted on removing holiday days from me that I hadn’t asked for or taken.
Internet Access
Internet access is a requirement for any developer. Many programmers will joke that they are “StackOverflow” engineers, after their reliance on the website with the same name. Programmers don’t know everything, but they know how to find the information they need, and the internet is the means by which they do it.
So it struck me by surprise when I found out that the staff, including the programmers, weren’t able to access the internet. At least not directly. You had to use a complicated system involving a virtual machine and other technical things to be able to view a page, and you couldn’t directly copy and paste code snippets (or anything) to your machine.
This seriously hinders development, so I talked to the CEO about granting myself and my team internet access. Eventually he conceded to allow me access, as I was the lead, but not my reports. After I learned from others in the industry that this was common in outsourcing companies to prevent staff stealing assets from other companies, I let it drop.
Still, it left a bitter taste in my mouth. It creates an environment where the staff aren’t trusted enough to do their jobs, and everyone is a potential thief. This can impact overall morale, and stifle people’s motivation.
Financial Abuse
One of the first tasks I had at the company was to try and hire new programmers. This opened my eyes to the absurdly low salaries they were offering other programmers. I had received a decent offer, though I’m not sure why. Unfortunately, with such low offers for other prospects, we were unable to hire anyone new.
During my time at the company I would keep learning about companies and contractors that Skysoul owed money too. I started to see the pattern very quickly: Skysoul wasn’t paying its bills and owed a lot of people money.
Work was piling up, so HR suggested that we bring in a couple of unpaid interns. I refused on the grounds that we were already overworked and deadlines were looming, so training some university graduates would take up too much of our time. Of course, the real reason I refused was that I knew they were just looking for free labour and I didn’t want to be a part of that.
I found out that when the company was running out of money the CEO would come down and ask the technical artist to open his bank account. He would then withdraw money directly into the company’s. As I got to know him better I could see that he was extremely unhappy, and likely depressed. The CEO had essentially belittled him into submission. It was so bad he was using substances to cope with the way he was treated.
Then one month no one in the company received a salary. I asked about why we hadn’t been paid yet, but the CEO and his wife kept brushing me off. While this incident deeply unsettled me, it wasn’t the breaking point.
Dodgy Contracts
I was sat at my desk working one day when the HR rep comes to my desk. She hands me a new contract to sign, written in Chinese. I ask her what it is and she tells me it’s just something they forgot to get me to sign. I never sign anything without reading it, so I asked her for a translated document.
She left me with the contract unaware that I could actually read Chinese. So I took a look at the document and it could basically be summed up as a NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). Essentially “don’t bad mouth the company”. But there was a clause in there saying that I’d have to pay the company 1 million RMB (around $130,000) if I breached the contract.
When she brought the translated document back it was a completely different contract. Most contracts in China will say the Chinese version supersedes any translated versions. In theory this is to ensure there is no confusion due to a slight mistranslation, but in this case it was clear they were trying to pull the wool over my eyes.
I asked her why it was different, and pointed out the 1,000,000 RMB clause. At that point she panicked, unable to really answer and took both contracts away without pushing me to sign. The next day I showed up with a letter of resignation, informing them I wouldn’t be working my notice as they were in breach of contract due to unpaid salary.
Aftermath
After I left me the company they sent me a letter out of the blue that “assessed” my performance. Among my faults were the fact that I would delegate work to my reports – an odd complaint since that’s literally the job of a Lead Programmer. It also complained that I took too long on certain tasks, and their time estimates were way out. I showed this letter to a lot of my friends in the industry and they found it as ridiculous as I did.
Some time after I was contacted by someone I used to work with at 2K China. They had been contracted to do some work for Skysoul, and wanted to ask my advice. I was blunt with him: he shouldn’t do any work for the company because they won’t pay him. He didn’t listen to me and took the contract anyway. I found out a few months later that he fulfilled the contract and the company didn’t pay him.
While I had left the company, the technical artist hadn’t. At developer meetups we would talk with mutual friends about how to get him out. He was clearly in an abusive relationship with the CEO who would belittle him, force him to work every hour God sent, and steal his wages back to pay company bills. And this was just the stuff we knew about.
Eventually he chose himself and left the company. I would see him attending meetups and looking for work. I put in a good word for him at Activision, though I don’t think he got the position in the end. The last I heard from him he had moved back to his home country and was holding down a steady job.
Skysoul doesn’t exist any more. There’s only so long you can go without paying your bills before the loan sharks start circling you, so they went bankrupt a long time ago. As far as I know, the former CEO doesn’t work in the industry anymore.
Abuse in the Industry
The video that inspired me to write about this can be viewed on the People Make Games channel on YouTube. It’s a story that raises awareness of a problem that most of us will be blind to as victims in abusive situations are often unable to, or simply to scared to, talk about their experience. The video does talk about and briefly shows physical abuse, just in case this is a sensitive topic for you.
Reflecting on my time at Skysoul and watching this video made me realize how pervasive these issues can be. Do people really know who is making their games, and if they are all being treated fairly?
It can be hard to vet every single company you contract, and often abuse can be hidden quite easily. Just as in other forms of abuse, the abused often don’t realise they are victims or don’t want to speak out of fear.
But it’s also important to acknowledge that in some places with less strict worker protections that these kinds of abuses can happen, and that we should not ignore it. Look at the credits for any major non-indie game and you will see a list of outsourcing companies that they work with. These people are making the games that you love to play.
There are laws in many countries that forbid companies from using child labour or slavery anywhere in their supply chain, so there is a precedent for something like this. But this is still a problem that hasn’t been solved.
I’m not claiming to have a solution, I don’t think anyone does. Encouraging unionisation within the industry may be one step in the right direction. Choosing to play games made by companies with transparent labour practices may be another. At the very least we can start to become aware that these things happen and start to open a dialogue about how to prevent these practices.
Change in this industry will require collective effort: from developers speaking up, to players supporting fair practices, to companies enforcing ethical labor standards. We all have a role to play in shaping a more equitable gaming industry.
