Following the resounding success of Elden Ring, some of the problems that FromSoftware employees would have to deal with have been brought to light on Twitter and other portals.
GamesIndustry.biz recently spoke to a number of FromSoftware employees, past and present, to get a better understanding of the situation and understand how much truth there is in the rumors that have been chasing each other in recent months. I study does not allow employees to give interviewswhether they still work at From Software or not. Therefore, all sources have preferred to remain anonymous.
The testimonies collected offer a picture of the situation which is not always uniform, with the working conditions that can vary a lot depending on the specific department: “There hasn’t been a lot of overtime work for me,” said one source, for example. Another employee said: “During critical periods of game builds, I often had to work early mornings and overtime for two or three months.”
On average, an annual salary at FromSoftware is 3.41 million yen, which is less than that given to developers at Atlus (5.2 million yen), a similarly sized development company. Compared to the cost of living in Tokyo, one source said that “FromSoftware’s salary is not adequate“.
It was also stated that the extraordinary they are “generally included in the salary”. After midnight, however, “we got paid for the nightly overtime, but that was the half of our usual hourly rate“.
It seems, in any case, that the opinion on one’s working situation is very variable within FromSoftware and that there is no general crisis within the company. There seems to be also a lot of satisfaction among employees, with several sources providing positive accounts of their experience, despite having some criticisms themselves.
