A former staff member at the Auckland offices of international social and mobile game developer Gameloft has said that working conditions were “dangerous” and that he was sometimes working between 100 and 120 hours a week.

Speaking with games.on.net, former Head Studio Programmer Glenn Watson said, “Some weeks I was working 100 to 120 hours a week.”

“It was after I worked four consecutive weeks of fourteen-hour days - including weekends - that I realised I needed to resign.”

Watson is reported to have shown games.on.net a series of communications with senior management at the Auckland office that assert they were “contractual hours”. One such email reads, “No one is held here against their will if they do not wish to work over their contractual hours”. Another reads, “It is more important to deliver a project than worry about possible avenues for future projects.”

As Watson and games.on.net point out, such hours would constitute “fatigue working” under New Zealand’s Health and Safety in Employment Act of 2002.

Watson’s whistle-blowing follows accusations in recent weeks that the working conditions at Sydney-based L.A. Noire developer Team Bondi were also “ominous” and that staff were under “perpetual crunch time”.

Team Bondi is under investigation by the International Game Developers’ Association. Speaking with Develop, chairman of the board of the directors at the IGDA, Brian Robbins, said, “Certainly reports of 12-hour a day, lengthy crunch time, if true, are absolutely unacceptable and harmful to the individuals involved, the final product, and the industry as a whole.”

Gameloft refused games.on.net’s request for comment.

Read much more at games.on.net.