Matt Booty reportedly said he's "confident" that reports of Fallout 76 crunch are no longer an issue.
During the all-hands meeting that was held on Thursday, the head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty has allegedly addressed the report accusing Bethesda and its parent company ZeniMax Media of crunch culture.
As reported by Kotaku, Booty held a Q&A during the meeting where he was asked to comment on the previous Kotaku report which covered poor labor conditions during the production of Bethesda's Fallout 76.
Kotaku claims to have seen a video recording of the meeting where Booty noted that he was "confident" the studio wasn't crunching. He also claimed that Xbox takes reports of crunch culture at its studios "seriously", although he said that "the challenge with a lot of these articles is that they look backwards, sometimes pretty far back in time."
Booty reportedly stated it is "unfair to put [crunch culture reports] on one studio" when it was "just part of the industry" adding that he doesn't justify it. "I’m just saying it was part of the culture of the industry. I literally slept under my desk early in my career. And we looked at that like a badge of honor," he said.
He also claimed that the working conditions at Bethesda described in reports are no longer an issue. "I know from talking to Bethesda leadership that we do not have a situation where people are crunching and we’ve got this bullying atmosphere ... I’m confident about that,” he said.
However, he also acknowledged that the crunch could be going without his knowledge adding that employees should only work overtime when they're passionate about that and without pressure and urged employees to follow Xbox’s internal processes like reporting their concerns anonymously to the Xbox HR department.
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