Ryuu96 said:
It only applies to America IIRC. They do it because if I remember correctly, Microsoft abused contractors back in the 90s, they hired temp workers and kept them on for years whilst not providing them with fulltime employee benefits, so temp workers sued Microsoft (in America) and won, now Microsoft can't hire temp workers longer than a certain period (18 months) because if they do, they have to treat them like fulltime employees and give them full benefits so Microsoft instead hires them for just under that period and then gives them the boot, but there is also a stipulation that if they do that they can't re-hire that same temp worker for a certain period either (6 months). Course that is probably okay for most Microsoft products (the timeline) but it does not work with videogames, these take 3 years minimum of production, 36 months, in the middle of those 36 months you have to drop a whole bunch of contractors and can't rehire them for 6 months so you lose valuable experience and knowledge, especially important when the knowledge is on a tool which is only unique to that specific studio, it's a bit of a cluster fuck but Microsoft doesn't seem to have any interest in changing things. I don't even know the contractor policies in Europe. |
This is correct since I was a contractor at MS during that time when they lost a lawsuit concerning having contractors for decades without paying benefits. During that time, MS released all of their contractors when they lost that lawsuit and then after a year tried to hire them all back. I am sure many declined like I did because I was not going to be put in that situation again. For certain contractors if you are going through an agency, they provide benefits which gets around this issue but if you are independant which is probably more for gamer developers and content creators they fall into that benefits issue.
