Олександр КузьменкоGameDev Eng
16 September 2026, 10:35
2026-09-16
“We always try to avoid crunches, but it still happens”. The head of the Wardogs game development studio explained why he screens out candidates who are not ready for overtime
Joe Brammer, CEO of British game studio Bulkhead, expects maximum performance from his team and fundamentally refuses to hire specialists who oppose overtime. At the same time, the manager introduces a four-day work week, a full day off in December, and pays bonuses that allow young developers to earn enough to buy their own home in a few years.
Joe Brammer, CEO of British game studio Bulkhead, expects maximum performance from his team and fundamentally refuses to hire specialists who oppose overtime. At the same time, the manager introduces a four-day work week, a full day off in December, and pays bonuses that allow young developers to earn enough to buy their own home in a few years.
Brammer spoke about his approaches to management, attitude to remote work, and business transparency in an interview with Game Business and on the social network X (Twitter).
The Bulkhead boss emphasizes that there is no forced “crunch” at the studio, but at certain stages of intensive rework it is impossible to avoid. To prevent conflicts of expectations, the company checks the social networks of potential employees during the hiring process.
“We always try to avoid crunch, but it’s going to happen. A lot of people who have a problem with it — and rightly so, I understand the problem — often don’t even get selected. If you’re constantly tweeting anti-crunch, we see that and we say, ‘Look, you’re not going to be happy here, so we’re not going to work with you.’ That’s what we want to be known for: this is a place where people come to work hard,” Brammer explained.
The head of the studio also fundamentally refuses remote work and does not seek to build the image of an "ideal employer."
“Satya Nadella once said, ‘People need to know what a leader stands for.’ People know what I believe in. They know I don’t believe in working from home while developing video games. They know I expect people to work hard. We’re not transparent and we’re not honest. We’re just being clear. Right now, it’s in our best interest to be transparent about some things, but we’re not telling everyone everything we do,” the studio head said.
According to Brammer, the high workload is fully compensated by conditions and financially. About 80% of Bulkhead shares are owned by 50% of the company's employees. In addition, for half of the development period, the studio operated a four-day work week, and December was declared a complete holiday month.
To protect the team from exhaustion after a stressful release, Bulkhead rejected demands to release the console version earlier and deliberately postponed its release to 2028.
“For the past three months, the Wardogs project has been more important than the family lives of many team members. But now we have to admit that the situation has to change in the other direction. We cannot force people to work even harder,” the manager concluded.
The large-scale tactical shooter Wardogs was a key project for Bulkhead's survival after the termination of cooperation with Chinese giant Tencent. The studio needed to sell at least 400,000 copies to stay in business. Sales have now exceeded 2 million copies (of which 1 million were pre-orders), allowing Bulkhead to buy back its own shares and maintain its independence.
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