GitHub removed activity streaks

You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All

by Adrian Hon  · 14 Sep 2022  · 371pp  · 107,141 words

agency and satisfaction from their livelihoods. And removing workplace gamification can improve lives. For years, GitHub, a code-hosting website with seventy-three million programmers, included gamified daily activity streak counters on user profiles.108 In a fascinating natural experiment, GitHub abruptly removed the counters in May 2016.109 The result? Long-running

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streaks were abandoned, weekend activity decreased, along with days in which developers made a single contribution. The

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the detriment of the actual content of their activity.… It seems unlikely that [programmers] logging in to make a single contribution to maintain an ongoing streak made useful or high quality contributions. This sort of behavior reflects an optimization of individual behavior for the sake of the game, and not for

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the quality of the work.” GitHub swam against the tide by removing its activity streaks, but two years later, it would be bought by Microsoft, a company with fewer qualms about

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gamification.110 Activity streaks seem unlikely to return, but it wouldn’t be surprising if Microsoft’s various productivity scores were integrated into GitHub in the future. Ultimately, workplace gamification misses the point. Work doesn’t need to be