Ryse: Son of Rome crunch tweet sparks Twitter furor

Ryse: Son of Rome is at the centre of a social media storm today thanks to a flippant tweet about development crunch.

"By the time Ryse ships for Xbox One, we will have served the crunching team more than 11,500 dinners throughout development," the game's official Twitter said earlier today.

This seeming celebration of crunch - a common industry practice of long overtime hours to meet deadlines - met with disgust from gamers, press and industry insiders alike. The hashtag #RyseFacts has been almost totally overtaken by reactions against the Crytek tweet.

Crytek has been criticised for its apparent callousness towards the effects of crunch on its employees' quality of life, especially as crunch is often considered the result of project mismanagement. Other commenters have argued that crunch is too common through the industry, and should be criticised in general, not just because of a social media gaffe; plenty of popular developers are equally guilty.

The hashtag is well worth browsing through if you're interested in how development crunch is viewed both inside and outside the industry.

Ryse is a Microsoft-published Xbox One launch title due in November. Originally announced as Kinect Xbox 360 game, it was reworked for the new hardware with support for traditional controls.