Long hours culture permeates working life across much of Asia. It takes different forms in different countries, but the pattern is consistent: people work significantly more hours than their contracts require, and the expectation to do so is baked into the culture rather than written into any policy.

In China, 996, working 9am to 9pm six days a week, became the defining term for this. Japan has its own deep-rooted long hours culture, one so severe that it produced the term karoshi, death by overwork. South Korea has gwarosa, the same thing. These are the extreme outcomes. But underneath them is a general norm where people simply don't leave, don't push back, and don't question whether the hours are necessary.

Governments across the region have tried to legislate against it, with varying degrees of success. China's Supreme People's Court ruled 996 schedules illegal in 2021. Some Chinese companies have gone further: DJI now sends managers round at 9pm to physically clear offices, and Midea has banned employees from staying past 6:20pm. Japan capped overtime at 45 hours per month in 2019, but PM Takaichi's "work, work, work, work, and work" pledge, named the country's buzzword of 2025, shows how far the culture still has to shift. South Korea cut its legal maximum from 68 hours a week to 52, then briefly floated raising it to 69 before public backlash killed the proposal. In Singapore, the question is whether 996 norms will take root as Chinese tech firms expand their presence there, with the Straits Times recently framing it as a cultural challenge the country is actively navigating.

The Crunch Connection

For those in the games and creative industries, crunch and long hours culture run in parallel, and the relationship between them matters.

Crunch is a production problem. It emerges from missed milestones, scope creep, and resourcing decisions that didn't hold up. It's still very much an issue in the industry. But it's a solvable one, because the root cause is usually traceable to planning. Long hours culture is something else. It doesn't need a deadline to exist. It's the deeper norm where staying late signals commitment and leaving on time signals the opposite, and it persists even when there's nothing urgent to deliver.

The danger is that the two feed each other. In a region where overwork is already the baseline, crunch doesn't stand out as an exception. It just feels like more of the same. That makes it harder to spot, harder to push back on, and harder to end. And it doesn't stop at your own teams. A significant amount of production work in APAC is done by outsource partners, often in countries where long hours norms are strongest. Your studio might have great policies, but if your external teams are working 996 schedules to hit the same deadlines, the problem hasn't gone away. It's just been moved.

What global companies can do about it

For international companies and studios operating in APAC, the challenge starts with understanding how people actually experience the workplace in different countries and what the accepted norms really are. You may have great policies in Europe or North America, but without cultural awareness and the right leadership locally, they won't translate on the ground. I've seen senior leaders from global HQs tell APAC teams "it's fine to work flexibly or leave early, you have our permission," and locally, nobody takes them up on it. It just isn't culturally something people do.

This is a leadership problem. Not a policy problem. And it won't be a quick fix. In many APAC markets, local leaders were themselves promoted because they worked those hours. Their entire career has reinforced the behaviour you're now asking them to change. This is generational, structural work. But it starts with three things.

Change what leadership rewards. If excessive hours are treated as high performance, people will keep doing it. Stop praising it. Stop making it the story of how a project got delivered. When leaders treat overwork as a planning failure rather than a badge of honour, the signal changes fast. This is also where psychological safety lives or dies. If the most senior person in the room celebrates the all-nighter, nobody beneath them will ever say "this workload isn't sustainable." The willingness to raise that without consequence is the thing you're trying to build.

Change how leaders show up. Do they send emails at midnight? Do they visibly take time off? Do they leave on time? Across most of APAC, people take their cues from the person above them. The behaviour you model is the behaviour you get. Make it part of how you assess leadership effectiveness. If your leaders aren't demonstrating sustainable work patterns, no policy or programme will compensate for that.

Build recovery into the plan. For studios and production teams, this means treating the period after intense delivery with the same rigour as the delivery itself. Mandatory time off after a milestone. Reduced hours for a defined period. If crunch is sometimes unavoidable, recovery shouldn't be optional. The studios that retain people are the ones that plan for both sides of the intensity cycle, not just the sprint.

Until organisations reward sustainable performance over presenteeism, this culture will continue, and people will continue to endure.

References

1. BBC News - 996 work culture spreading globally
2. Forbes - Inside Silicon Valley's 996 Culture
3. Business Insider - 996 Work Culture, Silicon Valley Burnout
4. Chinese Government Statement on 996
5. BCG - AI at Work: Is Asia Pacific Leading the Way?
6. The Straits Times - Will 996 Culture Take Root in Singapore?
7. Campaign Asia - 996 Debates Continue
8. KrASIA - DJI and Midea Making Employees Leave on Time
9. Reuters - China Tries to Call Time on 996 Culture
10. East Asia Forum - Japan's Workhorse Prime Minister Tests Labour Limits
11. CNN - South Korea's 69-Hour Workweek Backlash