Game developer Eidos-Montreal switches to four-day workweek

Eidos-Montreal and its subsidiary Eidos-Sherbrooke are switching to a four-day work week, the game developer said Thursday. The Square Enix-owned company is currently working on the next big adaptation of the Marvel video game, Guardians of the Galaxy.

“This initiative is another step towards the embodiment of the studio’s values, by creating a healthy, creative and sustainable working environment for our employees,” wrote studio director David Anfossi in the company blog. “The idea is not to condense the working hours into four days, but rather to review our ways of doing things and our quality time invested, in order to work better!

Eidos-Montreal specifies that the two studios will be closed on Fridays over the next few weeks, “without changing the working conditions currently in place or the salaries of employees, thus going from the 40-hour week to 32 hours”. The company is not entirely clear on how it plans to adapt to the new structure, but suggests that a change would be to have shorter meetings.

The review of work schedules and work-from-home policies has been a welcome change brought about by the pandemic. In the context of the video game industry, this is remarkable because of how often employees are expected or forced to overwork themselves to meet deadlines. There is no guarantee that a shorter work week will prevent the crisis from happening, but at least it cooks longer when workers can expect to rest.