We switched to a four-day work week in January 2025. The plan was simple: same output, fewer hours, happier team. What actually happened was more interesting than that.
What we expected
Better focus. Fewer meetings. People protecting their time more aggressively because they had less of it. This is what the research says happens, and roughly what we saw.
What we didn't expect
The Friday off changed how people played games. With a three-day weekend, everyone was playing more — not just our games, but games in general. We started noticing more pattern in what people were excited about on Monday morning.
Two features in Luma were directly inspired by games people played on those long weekends. The design conversations in the first quarter of 2025 were some of the best we've had. We're convinced the extra time to actually be players made us better at making games.
The hard parts
Customer support. Four-day weeks don't mean customers only need help four days a week. We ended up building a rotating on-call system for Fridays, which added some overhead but kept response times reasonable.
Coordination with external partners also got harder. App Store reviews, PR timelines, and contractor schedules don't care about your work week.
Would we go back?
No. The output quality is higher, the team is calmer, and the games are better because we have time to actually live our lives. That last part sounds like a lifestyle claim, but it's a design claim too. You can't make games for humans if you've forgotten what it feels like to be one.