Unnamed sources from Team Bondi have claimed that staff are victims of a brutal working regime with employees subjected to harsh dismissals, walk outs and impossible targets. These claims have not been taken lightly as now it has emerged that the IGDA is going to look into the matter.

...

This extraordinary story began when IGN published an article entitled: "Why Did L.A. Noire Take Seven Years to Make?". In that article they interviewed eleven ex-employees who all went on record to state that the horrendous working conditions they were subjected to all stemmed from the studio's boss Brian McNamara.

"If you left at 7.30pm, you'd get evil eyes," another artist recalls. "The crunch was ongoing. It just kept on shifting; an ominous crunch that just keeps moving, and moving. Management would say, 'Oh, it'll finish once we meet this deadline,' but the deadline kept moving. That went on for a good year." Of the three years that this artist spent at Team Bondi, he worked 60-hour weeks on average. To meet each development milestone – around one per month, he says – his workload would jump to between 80 and 110 hours per week, for a period of one to two weeks at a time. The wider issue, one animator believes, is "game companies thinking that crunch can solve poor scheduling, or bad design decisions made early on in a project."

Another source who left the company in 2008 called his experience at Team Bondi the biggest disappointment of his life. "I left because of stress and working conditions, mainly. But the trigger was this: I received a reprimand for 'conduct and punctuality' for being 15 minutes late to work. I arrived at 9:15am – despite the fact I had only left work around 3:15am the same day, and paid for my own taxi home! I never would have thought you could put a sweat shop in the Sydney CBD."

Also, employees describe McNamara as being extremely abusive and angry a claim which McNamara doesn't defend with any real conviction. One employee recalls that it was common for McNamara to pick an employee in the office and scream at him in front of others. The Team Bondi boss is standing strong and has defended his actions which surely is not going to help his public image.

"Am I passionate about making the game? Absolutely. Do you think that I'm going to voice my opinion? Absolutely. But I don't think that's verbal abuse."

"We all work the same hours," he told us. "People don't work any longer hours than I do. I don't turn up at 9am and go home at 5pm, and go to the beach. I'm here at the same hours as everybody else is. We're making stuff that's never been made before," he asserted. "We're making a type of game that's never been made before. We're making it with new people, and new technology. People who're committed to put in whatever hours they think they need to."

McNamara is unsure how often regular working hours were exceeded during the game's seven-year development period, but concedes that his own "standard workweek" may not be representative of the norm. "If you wanted to do a nine-to-five job, you'd be in another business," said McNamara, citing routine hours from 9am to 8pm - "whatever days it takes" – with frequent travel and 4am calls with the New York-based publisher."

Probably the most serious allegation to arise is in regards to overtime most of which has not been paid. While many will actually get their overtime pay a loophole in the employee contracts means that those who left the company, before the completion of L.A. Noire, will not see a penny of overtime pay. Many ex-employees have also been left off the L.A. Noire credits which has prompted a group of former Team Bondi employees to setup lanoirecredits.com which lists over 100 extra names that should have been included on the credits for the game.

IGDA chair Brian Robbins has this to say "Certainly reports of 12-hour a day, lengthy crunch time, if true, are absolutely unacceptable and harmful to the individuals involved, the final product, and the industry as a whole." The IGDA would also like to hear from any employees affected by the above to contact them via email at gol@igda.org.