Hi all, someone possibly explain to my broiled brain?:
How can it be, other Funcom games getting updates and seemingly normal support?
(Check those FC forums.)
FC was closed on a mandatory vacation?
Nothing was possible, hands in the air, laws and so?
Someone will explain,i must be wrong im sure.
Thanks!
Perhaps those titles were assigned to people living in other countries who were not subject to the same vacation laws? Either that or Funcom Management cared more about the success of those games than they do Exiles…
They released 3 Hotfixes, that is far from “normal support”. Hotfixes don’t demand that much, probably one or two developers that got their vacation earlier in the statutory vacation period.
Yeah it sucks to have to work when everyone else is on vacation. You end up having to do everything. This has happened to me several times over the years lol.
Well then we are two. We have similar vacation laws here is Sweden but we must have at least three on call at all times so I have ended up doing that several times.
We would rotate during Christmas vacation. One counter person and one warehouse person to handle all calls, shipping/receiving and anything else that would come up. Need someone to unload a truck, move equipment around the yard. Argue with a contractor lol. You get it.
Yes in Sweden we still have to request our summer vacations a couple of months ahead so the bosses can start looking at how everyone wants their vacation, then they can deny someone vacation at a certain time if there are too many employees that wants vacation at the same time.
But you have to let employees take a minimum of 4 weeks off somewhere between the months of june-august.
You can’t let everyone go on vacation at the same time, everyone would be out of business then, but they have to let them go on vacations between those months if their law is anything like ours.
In the USA. Depending on your state. You can bank vacation hours over a period of years, donate them to someone in need or get paid regular time for them. It depends on your company and the local state laws.
My company let’s you bank up to two years vacation. However, if you don’t use your banked hours within a specified time you loose it. They do not pay you for your unused vacation time.
The motto is, “Use it or loose it.”
It all depends on what your company do. Look at building construction, there a of of companies simply shut down for 4 weeks. As you said june-august are what the law says but contracts with the employee or the union (Kollektivavtal) sometimes make the vacation window even smaller.
I actually understand why FunCom more or less close the company during vacation. That can make the over all, seen over a year, the company more effective.
Yes i was talking more in general terms, most companies plan the vacations so there is always someone present at the company.
But even if this is a very frustrating situation i understand the reasoning why they chose to do it this way.
When vacation time is over they will be able to deal with all the problems with full force wich will help a lot.
Even if companies stay open in vacation times, it´s often a worse prolonged skeleton crew concept. So you end up with 2-3x the time with very low productivity because people have to cover several roles.
But again, go outside, it´s summer 
So true, and that’s why some companies just close down for a few weeks.
The impression I always got when interacting with companies from scandinavia was that it was fairly common for plenty of people to just up and leave for the summer. Combination of the labor laws and the sun being up for so long. Though, I will admit the sample pool I know was fairly small and primarily Swedish, not in Oslo like FC’s main studio. Funcom’s announcement of this didn’t surprise me in the least.
Also take into consideration that this is a video game. Nothing life altering being done by this company. No one is going to die if an update doesn’t happen.
As for other games getting updates… I know they have a studio in the U.S. but i get the impression that this game is currently in production in the Oslo office as it is their main location. My assumption comes from watching the dev streams.
I know this form of vacation time is unfamiliar to us in the U.S. because we don’t do things this way, but I have friends in Finland and they do which I have been jealous of them for. It seems like a pretty good system to me.
Well it’s not just about the sun hours during the summer, it’s also about the winter is so dam dark. That’s why we have labour laws that says we have the right to take vacation during the summer.
Also worth to know is that we have 5-6 weeks paid vacation, often more then our normal salary.
If you work with hourly pay you get 12% of you pay as vacation compensation.
Your employer can choose to give you the ammount once per year or to include it in your monthly paycheck, then you kinda have to save it yourself and don’t spend it on other stuff lol.
That’s how it is in Sweden at least i should add.
All I want to know, all I really care about is: When the hell will they be back?
Some of these bugs are getting so old they seem normal now. We don’t even bother taking archer or fighter thralls anymore. It’s like they exist in the game only to defend the crafter thralls from us.
Add to that the extreme heat we have in Scandinavia at the moment. A normal July in Olso have +21C/29,8F at day and +11C/51,8F at night. Right now Olso have +31C/87,7F ad day and +23C/73,4F at night. That’s higher night temps then they usually have at day time. Because we don’t rely have this kind of temperatures air conditions are far from common in offices.
So quite often your office can me more or less a sauna…
My guess is that the other games have different teams working on them. It was not my understanding that all of FunCom took vacation – I interpreted their announcement as those working on CE were taking vacation.
Regardless, it is July 30th, and July is all but over – as should their vacation be (based on the announcement that updates would slow during the last part of July).
I have been patient and diligent in supporting them for taking vacation when they did, as it is important for them to keep their minds fresh and the job enjoyable. If we don’t hear from the Developers within the next week, my patience and support will quickly wane.