Australia’s biggest AAA studio is telling employees they don’t have to come back to the office until June of 2021 thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Australia isn’t doing too bad when it comes to COVID-19, all things considered. The state of Victoria is having a rough time, with Melbourne instituting a curfew between 8 PM and 5 AM and banning visiting other households in order to get their new cases under control. But Victoria is only encountering a few hundred new cases per day, whereas certain US states are experiencing a few thousand new cases per day.
Sydney, Australia, which is in the state of New South Wales, is doing much better than Melbourne. The city doesn’t have a mandatory curfew or lockdown measures in place, although it still limits the size of social gatherings and encourages residents to practice physical distancing along with wearing masks.
And game studios are doing their part too. Wargaming Sydney is telling its employees that even though the office is open, they don’t need to return until next June.
“We recently told our team that we’re extending #WFH plans to at least June 2021,” Wargaming Sydney wrote on Twitter. “The studio will still be open for those who prefer to work there, and we’re continuing to grow the studio and hire, with interviews conducted virtually.”
While many game studios such as Bungie and Blizzard have moved to a work-from-home model to ensure employees remain safe during the pandemic, only Wargaming Sydney has taken the extraordinary step of informing its employees that they can stay home until well into next year. Although hopefully there’s a vaccine by this point, it’s just another example of the industry changing to where working from home might become the new normal.
As much as we don’t like how coronavirus has completely destroyed gaming conventions this year, it’s been kinda nice to get all these great game announcements spoon-fed to us without needing to leave the comfort of our own homes.
Source: Twitter
