Brian Hines, senior designer for The Outer Worlds, has spoken on behalf of developers Obsidian Entertainment, claiming that the company doesn't harbor the dreaded crunch.

The current year has seen several revelations emerge regarding the gaming industry and studios which make it so that their developers work under adverse conditions, with very little downtime, or even sleep.

The likes of Epic Games and Rockstar were at the forefront when the accusations were brought up, while Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment put out a statement that left them in a pretty good light, as they claimed that avoiding the crunch was one of the main reasons they refused to update the game on a weekly basis.

A certain founder of a now-defunct studio, however, said such negative environments are actually necessary back in April.

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Hines was recently interviewed by PCGamesN and revealed that, while Obsidian workers are sometimes required to put in extra hours to meet deadlines, there's no crunch going on.

"Obsidian is not a crunch studio, which is one of the things that keeps people staying there for a long time," he said.

The designer notes that any additional hours are "always [just] a request" and don't go past "a week or so."

Hines also said that the individual devs have the right to self-govern but can decline as well.

Since the earlier revelations, both gamers and developers have voiced their disagreement over such unhealthy practices. While everyone wants games released in a timely fashion, hardly anyone enjoys finding out that developers have to go through near inhumane conditions to get a game ready for a certain date.

via denofgeek.com

If Anthem is anything to go by, we'd all agree that a bit of patience goes a long way as the rush doesn't always work in a studio's favor.

"There really hasn't been a crunch or a death march or anything like that with the studio for quite a long time, as far as I can remember anyway," Hines adds. "That's definitely one of the things that as a studio we're very committed to. [W]e'd rather cut something than try and get people to not have a life outside of the industry."

The Outer Worlds will be out for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on October 25. It's coming to the Nintendo Switch as well, but a release date is yet to be confirmed on that front.

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