Capps clarifies "exploitation of power" comments

Epic president Mike Capps has added some colour to remarks he made earlier in April about working hours at an IGDA-sponsored meeting.

Capps apparently said that working a 40-hour week was "absurd" and that 60-hour weeks at Epic were part of the “corporate culture”.

Following the meeting, designer Greg Costikyan blasted the boss on his blog, claiming he was guilty of "exploitative practices".

In response, Capps told Joystiq:

Honestly, I'm not sure which of the various things that got everybody so upset. I think the main one was that if someone walks into the door and says, "I refuse to ever work past 5pm, I'll never work more that 40 hours a week and you can't make me", they're probably not a fit for us. Just the same way they wouldn't be a fit, I assume for you, if they said, "Well, I'll do E3 but I'm out at 5 and I'm not writing any articles till the next morning." Or a lawyer or a doctor saying, "I don't deliver babies after 5 and I never go out after 40 hours a week." I mean, our average number of work hours is what, 49, 50 in the US? So to have someone walk in and say they refuse to ever crunch for an E3 demo, it's kind of silly. It just shows that they're probably not passionate about what they do. That's very different from saying that we force people to work hard all the time.

There's a full interview here.