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'38 Spouse' explains decision to speak now, never heard of 'EA Spouse'
Late Tuesday night an email blast went to several media outlets from '38 Spouse,' offering up an inside look into the collapsed 38 Studios "through the eyes of a spouse of one of the employees." The allusions to the EA Spouse (Erin Hoffman) incident of 2004, a watershed moment in the industry regarding working conditions, gave us pause in printing the full letter. Turns out "38 Spouse" had never even heard of her predecessor."No, I was not aware at the time, but have now been enlightened," she told Joystiq. Although 38 Spouse has verified her identity to us, she wishes to remain anonymous to not "cause any problems" with her husband getting a new job. He remains unemployed, she said, "But there's lots of interest and we are hoping to have something soon.""It took me some time to get over the shock to be honest. Also, I have been looking for a temporary job, since I am not sure if we are moving or not," she told us when asked why she sent the open letter. "It's been a month and I really felt that now was the time to hear a different side of this story. I wanted to explain and make people aware in any industry, not just gaming, that this kind of thing happened. These employees were not a statistic, but real people with families and they believe in what they do."Asked who her husband blames for the situation she said, "He really doesn't blame anyone specifically as there were a lot of different reasons things weren't working."The full 38 Spouse letter can be found after the break.
EA employee survey shows positive change
Only a few years after "EA Spouse" exposed Electronic Arts as a white-collar sweat shop, the company released to GameDaily results of an internal employee survey showing it's changed since then. The survey, completed by 77% of EA's global workforce, showed that 63% felt motivated and excited about their job and are committed to making EA better.Gabrielle Toledano, Exec. VP of Human Resources, says that compared to three years ago when the survey was last done, the results showed a "significant improvement" at the company. This newest survey shows that there has been an improvement in overall satisfaction and morale, with much of the change credited to EA's restructuring into a "city-state" model. Toledano believes the survey shows a good start and that things at the company really have changed. "There's simply no tolerance at EA today for what was going on during EA Spouse."
Beware of BioWare: 2008's EA Spouse or internet anger?
According to a post from the infamous industry insider Surfer Girl, BioWare has been called out as one of the worst employers in the gaming world. Gamewatch.org poster Milez5858 warned forum readers of the horrors of working for the Canadian company, "EA gets a lot of the grief for their employment history. For anyone considering work at Bioware, beware of them as well." Milez5858 later added, "They love out of country workers because they don't understand the Canadaian [sic] labour laws. They continually fire people with out warning. This is illegal in Canada." So is Milez5858 a jaded employee of the recently acquired Canadian developer? No. In fact he/she claims to be a friend of former employees angered for being dismissed for refusing to work more than 40 hours a week. Soon after lighting the fire from under BioWare on January 25, Milez5858 removed his comments on Gamewatch.org's message boards regarding the company and its practices on February 13 leaving only the disconcerting words, "big scarey [sic] company vs. li'l ol' me." Who knows the truth in this situation, but let's look at the facts.
