This is moderately good news:

The sad tale of unnecessary and seemingly endless “crunch times” combined with a veritable mountain of unpaid overtime had many people shaking their heads in disbelief, although to former EA employees like myself the only reaction was “what took so long for this story to come out?”

Now it seems that the story has a happy ending. Electronic Arts has reached a settlement with its programmers to the tune of US$14.9 million. The money will go to programmers at various levels who worked at Electronic Arts between February 14, 2001 and February 14, 2006.

I’ve worked in the software industry since before the first boom, and one of the reasons it’s so extraordinarily profitable is that everyone is classified as an “exempt employee”, which means that they don’t get paid overtime.

Ridiculously long hours were (and to some extent, still are) a staple of the industry, although EA seems to have been a particularly egregious example. It’s good to see a little justice coming back. I do bet, however, that $15 mission is a whole lot less than the total unpaid overtime the company avoided. So much for any deterrence.