Experience the damaging reality of China’s 996 work culture in a new game

My Office 996 parodies work practices once championed by Alibaba founder Jack Ma, JD.com’s Richard Liu and Huawei

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A typical day in the game My Office 996: It’s 7pm on a Saturday, but more than half the team is still in the office. (Picture: My Office 996)

Karen Chiu

Published: 5:00am, 31 Mar 2020Updated: 5:19am, 31 Mar 2020

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Just six weeks into my shiny new programming job at a Hangzhou tech startup, I was thrown into a moral dilemma: Should I agree to the proposed firing of my senior coworker, who had been hospitalised after weeks of late-night working – or should I speak up to the CEO, who was clearly annoyed by the growing pile of unfinished work?

I chose to go against the boss. And then the game was over.

My Office 996 is a new mobile game that puts you at the heart of a notoriously common work culture in China’s tech industry: Toil in the office from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. Follow this unspoken rule, and you’re promised a bright future of lavish pay and a nice title to match – even if it means putting your physical and mental health at risk.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma once called the gruelling schedule “a huge blessing that many companies and employees do not have the opportunity to have.” JD.com CEO Richard Liu said his company wouldn’t force any employee to adopt 996, but added that, “Every JD staff should have the will to fight!” (Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba.)

Barely five months old, and with no backing from major publishers, My Office 996 has become one of the top-rated games on Taptap, a popular Chinese online game community. Scoring an average of 8.4 among nearly 1,000 reviews, the free-to-play indie game seems to have struck a chord with some of the country’s chronically overworked employees.