Joe Brammer, CEO of Bulkhead, the developer behind The Turing Test, Battalion 1944, and now the hugely successful new release Wardogs, has found himself in somewhat hot water, following a revealing interview where he discussed work culture at the UK studio.
After a day of heated social media debate and an initial response via X, Brammer has now issued a statement to Eurogamer. In it, he explains the exact nature of the studio’s “crunch” practices, and clarifies that his mention of monitoring the social media of potential applicants to the studio – a potential legal grey area in the UK – was a case of “speaking informally about our culture”.
To rewind a little, the response to Brammer’s comments began following his recent appearance on The Game Business, where he discussed a number of topics around the culture and running of the Bulkhead studio and, when the conversation shifted to crunch, revealed he expects his team to do so where necessary.
“A lot of people who may have an issue with crunch – rightly so, I understand that issue, we always try and avoid it, but we don’t hide that this is going to happen at some point,” he told podcast host Chris Dring. “[Those people] often don’t make it in the door, because we want to be known for that: this is a place you come to work hard. If you care about the work you’re making and the result of what you make here, this is a place to work. You’ll feel really valued. If you don’t, you will feel slave-driven,” Brammer explained. “It’s a constant to-and-fro with that.”
“But we will check people’s socials, and if you’re constantly tweeting anti-crunch messaging: ‘This should never ever be a thing’, we know that and go, ‘Look, you’re not going to be happy here, so we’re not going to go with you’.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, those comments then caused something of a backlash.
In response, Brammer said on X the articles covering his comments had taken them “out of context”, specifically singling out a PC Gamer article, for its use of the word “mandatory” to describe crunch at the studio.
“No information says mandatory, they made this up,” said Brammer, before going on to list a number of other “facts” – some of which were discussed in the interview, such as having a four-day work week for half of the game’s development time, 80 percent of shares being owned by 50 percent of staff, “everyone” at the studio being given the month of December off work, and that the studio “made a game you like and our staff will be rewarded for it accordingly”.
“We made that choice, don’t take it out of context, watch the whole interview here to make up your own mind,” he added on X.
While Brammer may not have explicitly said crunch at Bulkead was “mandatory”, earlier in his interview with The Game Business he did state that it’s a known expectation of his. When asked about his forthright approach to public communication, he said: “At Bulkhead and online, people know what I believe. They know I don’t believe in work from home for making video games. They know I don’t stand for that. They know I expect people to crunch. I own that. I don’t try and hide it.”
“That doesn’t mean that we also didn’t try and do the four-day work week and make workplaces better. They know I care about my team and my very close team,” he went on.
Crunch is an especially thorny topic amongst those who work in video games today, with the industry having a long history of normalising the practice of enforced, or otherwise heavily implied, overtime. Years of reporting has revealed a trend of labour exploitation at several high-profile studios, from CD Projekt Red to Rockstar Games, and a culture of mandating crunch ahead of major milestones at studios such as Naughty Dog. While in many cases crunch is not explicitly mandated, reporting has consistently evidenced that personal passion or other forms of internal pressure can be weaponised to get people to work longer hours. Many studios, including those reported on above, have gone on to promise to eradicate the practice going forward.
On the podcast, when asked what crunch actually looks like at the studio, Brammer said it depends on the context. “Generally, it depends on what age you are, is what we’re seeing,” he said. “The older guys are like, ‘This isn’t crunch, this is mild overtime,'” he answered. “But to do that, we have to be very conscious and supportive of our own staff and try and coach them to know when it’s enough, when it’s not enough.”
“In terms of defining what it is,” he added, “I always use the analogy of life being a balancing act. And sometimes, if you ask someone to mimic balancing, they put two hands out kind of like they’re on a tightrope,” he said, holding his hands out evenly either side of him. “But really, it’s probably more like this,” he continued, tipping his hands up and down on either side.
“And for the last three months, Wardogs has been a lot more important than a lot of their family lives. It has been, because that’s what pays the money for them. But now, Bulkhead and me have to acknowledge that it needs to go the other way. So for example, everyone’s pushing us to get console [versions] out earlier and we’ve just said: No, you don’t understand, that’s not how it’s gonna work. You can’t – we can’t push [the development team] more. We’re not doing that. It’s going to release in 2028 when we say it’s going to release.
“So for me it’s about balance, and helping people and making sure that they have a company where they can say, ‘I’m tapping out’ and not feel like they’re going to get fired for tapping out.”
Meanwhile, when asked how that culture of sporadic crunch remains feasible with an industry that’s getting older and less able to move their life around work, Brammer said the studio has tried a few things to mixed success. “So for instance, we once tried to do paternity leave and give people 10 weeks paternity and it was a disaster. Because they took the 10 weeks – as they should – but their partners, when it got to week 11, could not handle them leaving. They couldn’t handle the fact that they’re on their own with a kid now. And it was super consistent,” he explained.
“So we went the other way: two weeks paternity, the bare minimum. And then what we said was, the third week you come back half day, just the morning. I don’t care if you do no work, you’re training your partner how to look after their first child together and you’re building a routine. And then the third week, you do full days for two of the days or whatever. And then what we say is we’re going to give you three weeks to use as paternity weeks across the entire year for the first year. Because as you know, the first two weeks are actually kind of easy for a lot of people… it gets a lot harder later.”
Responding to the above discussion, Brammer issued the following statement on the topic of crunch to Eurogamer:
“In June 2026 we were late for the Wardogs beta build. In this instance I apologised and said the only way I thought we could get the game into beta, was by working an extra 2 hours a day Monday through Thursday, for 4 weeks (16 working days total). We admitted to the staff that this was crunch; we clearly stated that we needed to crunch. It was optional; four people opted out, nothing happened to them and nothing will. But I can admit that maybe the social pressure within a very tight-knit team might make those individuals feel less than great.
“The reason it was 2 hours and not something else was build times. Extending slightly meant we could get x1 more build per day, review it and get QA’s pass back on it, instead of waiting on the nightly build and picking it up the following morning.
“In this interview, I spoke a lot about trying to do things differently at Bulkhead. We don’t always follow “how things should be done” because we haven’t always had that experience, and the credit for giving us the freedom to experiment goes entirely to our staff.
“The best-known example is our four-day working week, which we ran for two years and, at the time, was one of the largest trials of its kind. We ultimately needed the fifth day of productivity, but we saw huge benefits and absolutely aspire to bring some form of it back in the future.
“Something mentioned far less is that 80 percent of Bulkhead’s shares are owned by 50 percent of our staff. The founders chose to give up equity to make that happen, and it’s one of the things I’m proudest of here.”
In addition to Brammer’s comments on crunch itself, meanwhile, some have also raised eyebrows at the explicit discussion of the monitoring of applicants’ social media, noting it’s something of a grey area in UK employment law – and potentially in contravention of it. Per the Information Commissioner’s Office, the independent regulatory authority in the UK responsible for upholding information rights, such screening should only take place in scenarios “where you are under a legal obligation (eg to perform right to work checks), or you can identify significant and particular risks to the employer, clients, customers, or others.” Candidates should also be notified of this in advance, the ICO says.
Eurogamer put this to Bulkhead, in response to which Brammer provided the following statement:
“We understand your concern, but I was speaking informally about our culture and the kind of environment we have at Bulkhead, rather than setting out our formal recruitment process.
“Where we do consider publicly available information as part of recruitment, it is done in line with applicable UK employment and data protection law. We don’t access private accounts or carry out covert or intrusive checks.
“My comments were really about being upfront about the kind of studio we are and making sure it’s the right fit for both sides.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Brammer discussed several other topics revolving around the notion of Bulkhead “doing things differently”, including why the studio avoids featuring trailers in Geoff Keighley’s showcases such as The Game Awards, the studio’s intentionally open approach to communication – including his invitation to disgruntled beta players to apply for a refund and come back when the studio had improved things, accompanied by a tongue-in-cheek trailer titled “10 reasons NOT to buy” – and Brammer’s occasional frustrations with UK labour laws.
In this case, that frustration was in reference to his attempts to reduce working hours or provide better work-life balance. “What’s quite frustrating is I find British HR laws quite restrictive to wanting to do better things,” he said. “The four-day work week, for example, was very restrictive. We had to get around laws to make the four-day work week possible. And I think when we try and do something a bit different, again, we hit blockages.”
It was a similar issue in regards to Bulkhead’s above approach to paternity leave. “That again – do you know what, I’ll be honest – you can interpret that in HR law as [some] people being given more holiday than others who are not in the same position,” he said. “So you can actually go, ‘That’s not fair!’ but we’re just like, ‘sue us’, at this point, this is ridiculous.”
Wardogs itself has been incredibly successful, selling 2 million copies in its first five days of release on Steam. Brammer revealed in the same interview that some members of the team – such those who own shares in the company – will receive bonuses as a result of that success.
“If we’re going to be a company who says, ‘We do crunch’, then we have to also say, ‘But you get something for it.’ We want people to know that those people who do work hard get that return, and it is life-changing,” Brammer concluded in the interview.
“I’m going to be really excited to see juniors who have been with us for two or three years who are going to get money to buy a house, or at least a down payment.”
