Microsoft only hires developers for 18 months to work on Forza Motorsport, according to an ex-developer

Adrian Campos, an ex-developer of Forza Motorsport has chosen to share his story about the time he worked for the Turn 10 Studios, between June 2022, and October 2023, in a YouTube video.

He claims that Microsoft follows an 18/6 rule, where the company hires developers to work on the Forza Horizon game for 18 months, and then take the rest of the 6 months off. Why? Because Microsoft won’t have to cover healthcare expenses this way. After those 6 months, developers can work to resume the cycle 18/6 cycle. However, those 6 months are not paid. So, you don’t have a job.

However, there would be a chance that Microsoft would offer a full-time position, and Campos accepted the offer to work under the 18/6 rule with the hope of getting that full-time position because Turn 10 Studios mentioned the position to him.

Campos’ story is somehow quite tragic: he was hired to work at Turn 10 Studio as a Senior Environment Artist in a contract from June 2022 to October 2023. A month into his new position, he found out that the other artists with whom he was working passionately to bring the new Forza Horizon game to life, had to leave the company because their contracts (that were following the 18/6 rule) were ending.

He was suddenly put in charge and had to hire more artists (under the same 18/6 rule), to continue the work. While he enjoyed what he did, and he learned a lot from it, Campos says the work was stressful and quite depressing under the rule: as he grew closer to his mentors, he had to watch them leave because their contracts would end.

In June 2023, Campos received an email from his contractor saying that his contract was almost up, and he had only 6 months left. In September, he was given a final warning from his contractor, along with an ultimatum: either spend those 6 months without a job or leave the company. The full-time position was out of the question.

Fortunately for Campos, he put in his 2 weeks’ notice and announced to the world, on Twitter (now going by X) that his contract was up. He then got offered another job at another company in a matter of days.

The 18/6 rule is not entirely new to the gaming industry, and many other gaming studios do it. Jason Schreier from Bloomberg has extensively written about it, when he investigated it happening at Activision, almost 4 years ago.

Back then, Microsoft was also one of the companies that would employ this kind of rule to avoid paying additional taxes. However, the rule turned out to be greatly disruptive to the development of many games, including Halo Infinite.

At Microsoft, contractors can only work for 18 months max. (They can then come back after a six-month break.) Microsoft uses so many contractors that this limit leads to a lot of attrition — and for games that take 4+ years to make, like Halo Infinite, it has been disruptive

Jason Schreier

The rule, while fitting to companies’ budgets, earnings, and overall financials, is quite detrimental to those working on these video games, including Adrian Campos, who was passionate about the work he was doing on Forza Motorsport until the end.

Besides the obvious reasons why this rule could cause mental health issues – and by this, we mean lack of access to healthcare, lack of bonuses, no vacations, or salaries just above minimum wage – it also stops real talent from actually blossoming into great projects.

Forza Motorsport was eventually released in October and Campos was proud of some of his work getting appreciated, but many more games are facing development delays (the next Halo game, for instance), because this rule might be going on: replacing talent after talent every 18 months.