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In the last year of development on Red Dead Redemption 2In the next Western game, the main directors decided to add black bars to the top and bottom of each non-interactive cinematic in the hope of making these scenes more cinematic, like an old-school cowboy movie. Everyone agreed that it was the right creative act, but there was a problem: it would add weeks of work to most schedules.
"You can not just type black bars on the cutscenes we've already shot," said one person who worked on the game. "You have to reframe the camera so that the kinematics scrolls in a particular way, and you emphasize that that you did not emphasize at the beginning with this plan. "
No hope of delaying the game longer-Red Dead Redemption 2 had already been internally modified before the announcement and then publicly delayed twice. Rockstar Games developers had no way to add more time to their schedule. Instead, they would be forced to work hard, adding extra nights and weekends to remake those scenes and manage the rest of the huge workload that was waiting for them. Are black bars worth it?
This has been a common occurrence in the last few years of developing a Rockstar game. Dan and Sam Houser, the co-founders of Rockstar and creators in charge of Red Dead Redemption 2, are renowned for restarting, reviewing and throwing chunks of their games. During eight years of development on Red Dead Redemption 2Housers and other filmmakers have made a number of major changes to the story, the essential game mechanics and the overall presentation of the game. This is a process that some people consider essential to create a game of this nature. But it is also a process that entails many overtime and has helped to create a culture of tightening at Rockstar Games impossible to deny, according to interviews with dozens of current and former employees. It is not a crisis that has occurred in a few weeks, it is a crisis that, according to these employees, has lasted for months, even years.
There are two Sundays, a laudatory article in New York Magazine about the making of Red Dead Redemption 2 aroused controversy through a quote, left unexamined and unexplained, in which Dan Houser described the work done "100-hour weeks" to get the door play. The following Monday, Houser said in a statement sent by email to Kotaku that he was only referring to the editorial team and only for a period of three weeks. On Wednesday, the company lifted its social media policies, allowing employees to share their impressions of their own experiences with Crunch.
The article and its spinoffs have given rise to many industry discussions about the crisis and many questions about working conditions at Rockstar. The society behind Grand Theft Auto V, the most lucrative video game of all time, overloads its employees? How many unpaid overtime hours have been incurred Red Dead Redemption 2? Is it necessary to make games with the scope and scale of Red Dead Redemption and its sequel, which will appear Friday and which is likely to be a huge commercial success? What does Rockstar culture really look like?
This account, an overview of one of the game's most secretive companies, is based on interviews with 34 current employees and 43 former employees, by phone, as well as by e-mails and texting. Last Wednesday, Rockstar told current employees that they are allowed to talk to reporters (provided they inform human resources), but almost everyone who told me about this story required anonymity. Some said they feared retaliation for being forthright about their negative experiences at Rockstar, and others said they were afraid of appearing dishonest for sharing positive stories.
In addition, Rockstar provided interviews with 12 current employees through group video chats, as well as its head of publishing, Jennifer Kolbe, who oversees all of Rockstar's studios.
The tale of Red Dead Redemption 2The development of this product is complicated and sometimes contradictory. For some people at Rockstar, it was a satisfying project, an ambitious game that took reasonable hours and was much less complex than the previous games of the company. Many current employees are happy to work at Rockstar and love being able to help create some of the best games in the world. Other described Red Dead 2 as a difficult experience, which has cost them friendships, family time and mental health. One interviewee stated that he worked 100 weeks a week, which would be equivalent to seven 14-hour days. However, many said their average weekly hours were around 55 or 60 hours, which would be six days of ten hours. Most current and former Rockstar employees stated that they had been asked or had felt obliged to work at night and on weekends. Some worked on hourly contracts and were paid for overtime, but many were paid and were not compensated for overtime. Those who are still in society are hoping that their 2018 bonuses, which should be significant if Red Dead 2 does well – will help to make up for that.
Many of the most heartbreaking stories told by current and former employees – anecdotes of degraded relationships, mental health disorders, and high alcohol consumption at work – were impossible to print without the risk of revealing people's identities. involved. Given the complexity of Rockstar's non-disclosure agreements and the potential consequences of their violation, we erred in being as cautious as possible in this article, which meant the omission of some of the more difficult details. that we have heard.
Rockstar has thousands of people in eight offices in five countries. It is therefore not surprising that its employees experience a wide variety of experiences. Last week, Rockstar shared several stats with Kotaku and other outlets, including the weekly average reported in all its offices from January to September of this year. According to these statistics, from January to March 2018, Rockstar employees worked an average of 42.4 hours. From April to June, they reached 45.5 hours. And from July to September, 45.8 hours. The averages include people from all disciplines and working on all of the company's projects, which helps to explain the gap between these numbers and the anecdotes we've heard. People whose work on Red Dead Redemption 2 previously, or working on different projects (such as Grand Theft Auto Online) who were not in heavy crunch mode this year, may have worked a lot less hours. Those who worked on Red Dead Redemption 2 describe the cinematics team, the design team, and especially the quality assurance team, as facing the worst challenges.
In a Monday email, Kolbe provided another explanation aside, saying that "averages for Red Dead only would not be significantly different "and that holidays were actually included in these averages, although the holidays were not. "However, the explanation of the discrepancy between intercompany data and individual anecdotes is this: you hear individual anecdotes that self-select themselves for the more extreme ends of the story." scale as well as for people who clearly have problems with our process, "she said.
"There are absolutely people who, at different times, worked very long hours," added Kolbe. "There are also people who exaggerate their actual hours because we have confirmed their self-reported numbers at that time as being substantially lower than what they remember to have done in their online posts, and we offered to share the proof of this with you if we give them permission. "
(We could not discuss stories of individuals with Rockstar because we had agreed to protect their identity.)
Even among those who said that they feared Red Dead Redemption 2, the accounts have varied. Some said they had left or were planning to leave because they felt mistreated, while others described Rockstar as a great place to work, apart from the long hours. Several staff members said they were frustrated by Houser's comments suggesting that the company's overtime was voluntary. "I did not volunteer for that," said a current developer. "I just know it's the cost of my job." We've heard the most challenging stories from two offices in particular: Rockstar Lincoln in the UK and Rockstar Headquarters in New York. From other Rockstar studios, we have heard a variety of positive and negative stories. (A studio we did not hear much about was Rockstar India, although those from other offices reported having heard that overtime was bad, too.)
Personal experiences may differ, but anecdotes from past and former employees paint a coherent picture: Rockstar Games is a complex and sometimes difficult business, where working "hard" is equivalent to working as many hours as possible. Many said Kotaku they felt compelled to stay at the office at night and even to come on weekends if they wanted to succeed. Despite Dan Houser's quote that "no one, no senior or junior, is ever forced to work hard," people who have worked and currently work at Rockstar say overtime is mandatory. In conversations, many used the phrase "culture of fear," with some saying they feared prosecution or other reprisals for speaking up.
"Games are important to us … you can become obsessed with things." – Jennifer Kolbe, Rockstar Publishing Director
"The overall tone at Rockstar is that what the company values most is not the bugs you correct, but the hours you've invested," said a current employee, echoing the news that the company's business has been doing. opinion of most people interviewed for this article.
Rockstar's Kolbe disagrees with this description, but acknowledges that many of his team worked evenings and weekends in the Red Dead Redemption 2Launch of.
"In an ideal world, I would like to think that we could do all our work so that we do not have to spend the night here late, but at the same time, I think we are really testing ourselves," he said. she. "I think this is generalized. It's not just the game team, I think it's the people involved in every aspect of what we create here. We will strive for the best possible element, be it the best creative element, a TV ad, trailer, be it a back-of-box copy … We care deeply about the games. I think it can sometimes lead to a bit of … You may become obsessed with some things.
Many video game studios are in a hurry and it is rare to find a big game that does not require excessive overtime. However, dozens of Rockstar employees and former employees describe a company that seems to be more affected by the crisis than others, a company in which people have always struggled to succeed without spending long hours. Rockstar is one of the most impressive games in the world. The question is: what is the cost?
Rockstar's crisis culture became public almost nine years ago. On January 7, 2010, an anonymous author published a letter claiming to belong to a group of "wives of Rockstar employees in San Diego." The report, which attracted much publicity, criticized Rockstar's California studio for forcing the staff to work 12 hours a day. six days a week to finish the first Red Dead Redemption, which will be released four months later, in May 2010. At the time, Rockstar was saying "some anonymous posters on bulletin boards", but the people who worked on the game say that the letter accurately describes what they experienced.
"If you leave early on a weekday or a weekend, you'll look disgusted," said a former Rockstar San Diego employee who said he worked an average of 70 hours a week Red Dead Redemption. "You feel the look down, and sometimes you see it when you leave. There was this culture of, if you do not put in the hours, you are not worth the trouble of working here. "
At the heart of this crisis, Rockstar San Diego started offering a laundry service, according to two people who worked there. According to another former employee, some people felt uncomfortable: they would not even have enough free time to do their own laundry. ?
"The temperament of these guys has always been this: it should be a privilege to serve in this organization," said one person who was present. "And if you do not agree with that, there is a long line of people waiting to take your place."
This is a common feeling among those who have had negative experiences at Rockstar, especially those who were there at the first Red Dead. "Normally, I would never talk about my time at Rockstar – it's not my style," said another person who worked for Rockstar San Diego during the development of this game, "but we were forced to work six weeks a week in the six to nine months leading up to launch. "
Even Rockstar's management now admits that the weather was problematic for the company, even though it initially rejected the anonymous letter.
"We have certainly examined Red Dead 1 and what came out of it, and I knew we did not want to have such a situation anymore, "said Jennifer Kolbe of Rockstar." I think, of course, as the team has developed its working practices together we have improved the way teams are managed. "
The next Rockstar project after Red Dead Redemption was The black (2011), which had a difficult production under the Australian studio Team Bondi, then Max pays 3 (2012), a third-person shooter on an alcoholic vigilante. The people who worked on Max pays 3 They described it as a "death march", a brutal period for society that involved long nights and a lot of mandatory tightening.
"I'm going to be honest, a lot of the details of my life during this period are pretty virgin," said one person who worked on Max pays 3 at the Rockstar office in New England, Massachusetts. "It was a lot to get into the office at 9 or 10 o'clock and leave at 10 or 11 o'clock in the evening."
This person, who was an employee, was not paid for overtime. Instead, they hoped the game would sell well enough to give all staff a health bonus.
Bonuses are a big problem at Rockstar Games. The standard compensation package for a Rockstar employee includes an annual bonus, which increases significantly during the years the company ships a game. According to Rockstar, this depends on many factors, including the sales of this game and the performance of each employee. Some former Rockstar employees reported receiving heavy bonuses after the first Red Dead Redemption, sometimes reaching five digits in the middle. But Max pays 3 According to the former Rockstar employee, sales did not sell well. As a result, premiums in 2012 were well below expectations.
Then came 2013 Grand Theft Auto V, which required many people working in Rockstar Studios. A former employee of the Rockstar office in Toronto shared documents indicating the number of hours a team worked in a week in the months before GTA VThe Liberation. Those who worked less than 60 hours were marked with the word "Sub" in red letters. A person who worked at one of the UK's Rockstar offices stated that the stress of working overtime for almost a decade had cost them their relationship and mental health, although this person also insisted on the fact that it was one of the best places to live. never worked. "They were, are, one of the best companies," said the person. "But the problem is that for the people who work for them, it's not just a job, it's an absolute way of life."
It is not unusual to hear current and former employees describe Rockstar as a family – or, less charitably, as a "sect". Some have said that society has struggled to help them during difficult times, such as death or serious illness. Some have said that they saw Rockstar doing a kind of fire test: working on it for a few years, working overtime and your resume will be armed with a Grand Theft Auto or one Red Dead Redemption, giving you the prestige of being hired by any game development studio you like.
During the development of Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar has officially begun to adopt a new policy. Instead of different studios or clusters of studios working on each project, as they had for Red Dead 1 and Max pays 3, all Rockstar offices would combine their strengths. For some departments, this has reduced the workload.
Others said that they still had a hard time, though. Three people who worked at Rockstar San Diego between 2011 and 2016 remember a time when they were told that overtime was not optional. "It was at least 80 hours mandatory for the entire studio," said a person present. "If you do not have work to do on Red Dead 2, just test GTA V for another eight hours, "said a second:" Maybe they did not say 100 hours to anyone, but they certainly told us 80 hours.
A current employee of Rockstar San Diego also confirmed that he had been asked to work 80 weeks a week at the time. That would be an average of 11 hours of work – from 10 am to 9 pm – for the seven days of the week.
In order to keep track of the hours, Rockstar asks many employees to log into BugStar's bug tracking software every day when they get to work and then log out when they leave. (Some Rockstar offices use other software to track their hours.) Employees are also asked to record individual tasks, which Rockstar says is used for project management purposes. Thus, the company can know the time it takes to fix bugs or implement features. It is an environment that gives some staff members the feeling of being constantly monitored. Several employees said that they were summoned to their director's office and asked why they did not work more than 40 or 45 hours a week.
"The idea that Rockstar cares about its employees and their health is laughable," said a former San Diego employee who left during the production of Red Dead Redemption 2. "Depression and anxiety pushed me further than ever when I was working there. My body was exhausted, I did not feel able to have friends outside of work, I felt like I was going crazy for a good part of my time there and I started drinking a lot … Now Some friends have said that there are still working on it that some improvements have been made, but Dan's statement on the optional nature of the crunch is ridiculous. It's optional if you want to lose your job or never advance in your career. "
When Red Dead Redemption released in May 2010, it was a huge critical and commercial success. It has been widely regarded as one of the greatest games of all time, and it is not surprising that Rockstar Greenlit is a sequel.
Red Dead Redemption 2, announced in October 2016, has been developing since the beginning of 2011. Those who have worked on gambling in the last seven years have expressed only positivity towards it, and even those who feel bitterly the treatment that they booked Rockstar. recognize that working on following Red Dead was creative satisfying. "The work I did there is the most fun and interesting job I've ever done," said a former Rockstar employee who, on the other hand, had nothing negative to say about his experiences with Crunch, management and society as a whole. "I think I enjoyed the real work more than I really did."
Current employees and former employees praise the praise Red Dead Redemption 2, describing it as different from anything anyone has ever played before. It is about to be one of the most technically impressive games of all time. It has also been developed under a lot of crisis.
The word "crunch" is something of an abuse of language. This involves a short time towards the end of a project – a critical moment, the last opportunity for everyone to make the game as good as possible. But in the video game industry, the tightening can occur at any time, for various reasons. Whether it's an important milestone for publishers, the presence of some executives or a creative director who wants to watch a new demo, game developers sometimes have to work from night or weekend to carry out large tasks.
For some people working on Red Dead Redemption 2the crisis began in 2016. For others at Rockstar, the crisis began in autumn 2017, one year before the release date of the game. Even when the company was not in official crisis mode Dozens of former and former employees felt obliged to stay late for various reasons. "Rockstar is putting pressure on employees to work overtime in a variety of direct and indirect ways," said a current Rockstar developer. "The weekend may be the only way to show you are dedicated and caring. So you can be very efficient and work hard during the week, but if you do not show up on weekends, you are accused of not doing your part and you will be constantly harassed. "
In conversations and e-mails, six employees, past and present, all independently used the term "culture of fear" to describe their experiences at Rockstar, largely due to the pressure of overtime. "There is a lot of fear at Rockstar," said a former employee, "afraid to be fired, afraid of being underperforming, afraid of being bawled, afraid of delivering a game of shit. For some people, fear is a big motivator, for others it incites rebellion. Some current employees, when asked, said they had not experienced anything like this, noting that everything would depend on their department and manager. However, those who worked in several Rockstar offices said they felt they had to be in the office as much as possible, for fear of getting bawled, seeing their premiums tied up or losing their jobs.
Even last week, with Rockstar management having sent many messages to employees to tell them they were invited to share their experiences, some staff members said they were terrified by their openness. Last weekend Rob Nelson, head of Rockstar North's co-studio, e-mailed all of the company's staff, acknowledging that management was looking to improve "our approach to development at this scale" and promising that nobody would be targeted for sharing information back. "He reiterated an offer he made last week that if any of us wants to talk to him, he's happy to do it," said one current employee, "but all the people at who I spoke are always afraid to open it. "
A common fear at Rockstar is that if you quit during the production of a game, your name will not appear in the credits, no matter what work you have spent. Several former Rockstar employees lamented this and Rockstar confirmed it when I asked him. "It was a consistent policy because we always felt we wanted the team to reach the finish line," Kolbe said. "And a very long time ago, we decided that if you did not finish the game, you would not be credited."
Kolbe told me later that for Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar "was planning to recognize many contributors, including many former employees," which turned out a list of their names on the company's website. This list includes those who worked on Red Dead Redemption 2 for years, but before the game was delivered, which led Rockstar to exclude their names from the game's credits. This seems to be the first time Rockstar has credited his former employees in such a way.
"Rockstar is putting pressure on employees to perform overtime in several direct and indirect ways." – Current employee of Rockstar
For some, crack Red Dead Redemption 2 It was a choice that many current and proud employees today let me know because they wanted to make the game as good as possible. Many have discussed the ethics of voluntary restraint – and the pressures it places on co-workers – but some of the Rockstar staff members insisted that their overtime was not required. They were workaholics, they told me. They wanted to put in this extra effort to make Red Dead 2 awesome.
For others, the tightening has appeared for other reasons. During the development of Red Dead Redemption 2According to several sources, the Houser brothers were not satisfied with the evolution of the game on many points. They made major changes to the map and the camp system, a central element of Red Dead Redemption 2 this involves the gang of criminal comrades of the protagonist Arthur Morgan moving around the world. "There was a point where the Houser brothers. were extremely disappointed with the evolution of the game, "said a former Rockstar employee. "They did not like the gameplay, did not find it fun or interesting, and it triggered a redesign of many things."
Even something as simple as changing the name of a city can result in tons of extra work. At one point, Red Dead Redemption 2The largest city was called New Bordeaux, confirmed two sources, but when Rockstar discovered that the open world game Mafia III (developed by 2K, which also belongs to the parent company of Rockstar Take-Two Interactive) had used this name, they changed it to Saint Denis. This involved involving voice actors in the dialogue booth for a large number of re-recordings, which meant considerable additional work for anyone involved in the cinematics – not to mention all the changes to the illustrations and the re-recording. 39; interface.
Ask any game developer what is the most important part of creating games and they will probably give you an answer in one word: Iteration. This means that you experiment, prototype and change your game until you know what works best. Inévitablement, cela signifie qu’il faut abandonner le travail déjà fait et, ce qui est encore plus inévitable, cela signifie que toute une équipe devra consacrer des heures supplémentaires à une partie. De nombreux développeurs de jeux y voient une des raisons pour lesquelles la crise est inévitable, en particulier pour ceux qui sont au bout du fil. L’équipe audio, par exemple, ne peut pas travailler tant que les autres parties du jeu ne sont pas finalisées.
«Il est impossible de planifier avec précision un projet aussi compliqué que RDR2», A déclaré un employé actuel de Rockstar. «Il y aura toujours des problèmes ou des dépendances inattendus générant des goulots d'étranglement qui nécessiteront que quelqu'un fasse le travail rapidement, sinon 20 autres personnes seront bloquées. Si quelqu'un recherche un poste de type 9-5 sans aucune surprise, il existe de nombreux emplois dans différentes industries pour lesquels une personne travaillant dans les jeux est plus que qualifiée. "
Pourtant, le ressenti de Rockstar est différent de celui des autres studios. Depuis des années, des rumeurs circulent dans l’industrie à propos de la crise de la société derrière Red Dead Redemption 2, et il y a beaucoup de gens avec des histoires à raconter.
Au cours de la rédaction de cet article, j’ai entendu un large éventail d’opinions et d’anecdotes diverses et souvent contradictoires. Même au sein du même bureau, une équipe peut être confrontée à une crise brutale, tandis qu'une autre équipe travaille normalement pendant neuf heures. Un employé de Rockstar NYC, par exemple, m'a dit qu'il travaillait entre 60 et 70 heures par semaine depuis deux ans. Ils ont dit qu’ils ne pouvaient pas se voir faire ce genre de travail encore longtemps. Mais ils ont aussi dit qu’ils ne voyaient pas comment un jeu comme Red Dead Redemption 2 pourrait être fait.
"Je pense que l'un des gros malentendus que je vois beaucoup dans les commentaires et les articles est qu'il ne s'agit pas d'un calcul complexe", a déclaré l'employé. «Nous sommes conscients que nous essayons de créer une œuvre d'art plus que de produire un produit. Si je fabriquais un produit, [at] 17h Je sors. Mais nous faisons quelque chose que vous n’avez jamais vu auparavant. "
L’employé a déclaré qu’il s’était approché à cause des commentaires de Dan Houser laissant entendre que le resserrement était limité et volontaire chez Rockstar – des commentaires qui, selon lui, les exaspéraient, ainsi que d’autres dans leur bureau. "Nous avons reçu quelques courriels où ils se disaient:" Regardez, les gars, nous devons respecter ces délais, nous ne verrons pas de mégots sur les sièges le samedi ", ont-ils déclaré. Ils ont ajouté que leur crise avait «100% de conséquences à long terme» sur leurs amitiés et leurs relations, mais qu’ils feraient tout à nouveau s’ils le pouvaient. "Ce jeu n'aurait jamais vu le jour si nous n'avions pas mis les heures à notre rythme", a déclaré l'employé.
Un second développeur de Rockstar NYC a également déclaré s’être efforcé de répondre aux commentaires de Houser. «Bien que personne que je connaisse ne travaille 100 heures par semaine, nous sommes nombreux à travailler entre 60 et 80 heures par semaine depuis un ou deux ans», ont-ils déclaré. «Entendre l’un des responsables de la société affirmer que rien de tout cela ne s’est produit a été un coup dur porté au moral à un moment où nous devrions célébrer.»
Un troisième développeur Rockstar au bureau de New York a déclaré qu’il avait eu des expériences bien plus positives. «Nous avons beaucoup moins de choses que ce que nous avons présenté jusqu’à présent et il n’ya pas de« honte secrète »à l’égard des personnes qui partent tôt, a déclaré cette personne.
Un quatrième développeur actuel, également à New York, a déclaré qu'ils étaient terrifiés à l'idée de communiquer avec moi et qu'ils avaient l'impression de travailler de longues heures sous une "culture abjecte de la peur". Un cinquième employé de Rockstar New York a raconté son passé quelques années avaient été formidables. "Je détesterais vraiment que toute la direction de Rockstar soit vilipendiée lorsque certains dirigeants / dirigeants font vraiment un travail phénoménal et se soucient réellement de leurs employés", a déclaré cette personne.
Comme dans toute grande entreprise multinationale, les expériences chez Rockstar peuvent être radicalement différentes. Pourtant, il y a quelques thèmes communs. L’employé actuel de Rockstar, qui a déclaré avoir moins travaillé que ce que les articles ont présenté, a également soulevé un point qui fait écho à de nombreuses autres personnes: chez Rockstar, être au bureau est avant tout une valeur. «Rockstar a un problème omniprésent avec« l’apparence du travail »», a déclaré cette personne dans un courrier électronique. "Ils aiment voir des gens à leur bureau (ils ne permettent pas de travailler de chez eux sauf pour des raisons médicales et même dans ce cas, ils recommandent vivement [paid time off]). Ils aiment aussi les gens qui restent à dîner et on voit un peu honte de ne pas rester avant le dîner (7h30) dans quelques semaines. "
Au bureau de Rockstar à New York, le dîner a été préparé trois à quatre soirs par semaine depuis le début de la crise, à l’automne 2017, d’après les personnes qui m’ont parlé. Pour certaines équipes, cela n’a pas été présenté comme une option volontaire. Un e-mail partagé avec Kotaku À partir de l'automne 2017, il est clair que le resserrement était nécessaire, à commencer par trois nuits par semaine.
Au cours de la semaine écoulée, les employés de Rockstar ont partagé sur Twitter plusieurs histoires positives, notamment à Rockstar North, à Édimbourg, en Écosse. crunch sur Red Dead Redemption 2 était le plus facile qu’ils aient jamais eu. Bien que Rockstar ait explicitement dit aux employés de ne pas «raconter leur histoire» à l'un de leurs récits, des observateurs extérieurs étaient sceptiques quant au fait que quiconque puisse publiquement salir leur employeur actuel. Indeed, when I spoke to some of those who tweeted, some who responded said they had been honest but may have left out some parts of their stories—and that they were hoping that this month’s events might lead to change for those Rockstar staff in departments that had it rougher.
Former employees have also publicly shared negative experiences. Job Stauffer, who worked in PR for Rockstar, said on Twitter that he had worked weekends during his time at the company. “It’s been nearly a decade since I parted from Rockstar, but I can assure you that during the GTA IV era, it was like working with a gun to the head seven days a week. ‘Be here Saturday & Sunday too, just in case Sam or Dan [Houser] come in, they want to see everyone working as hard as them.’”
“It was never about working, it was always about, you want that good bonus so you need Dan and Sam to see you sitting there.” – Current Rockstar employee
Privately, several current employees told me that this hasn’t changed. Those who didn’t work in the New York City office shared stories of everyone having to work extra hours whenever the Housers came to town, while those who do work in New York echoed Stauffer’s comments.
“There’d be Saturdays that I’d go there with nothing to do,” said one. “I’d sit in the office for six to eight hours just in case Sam or Dan was there, so they could see me. It was always dictated to me about my bonus. It was never about working, it was always about, you want that good bonus so you need Dan and Sam to see you sitting there.”
Said another: “The stories you’ve heard about people coming in to be visible for the Housers (more frequently Dan than Sam) are 100% true. Earlier this week, I had a coworker tell me completely unprompted that he was often asked to come in on weekends so Dan could see people in the office. I myself have been told at least once to walk a lap around the floor on an otherwise slow Saturday so that he could see there were people around.”
When asked about this, Rockstar head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe said she found it shocking. “I can’t speak to any particular manager that might say that type of stuff,” she said. “I don’t know the last game review with Dan or Sam that actually flowed over to a weekend… I’d like to believe that we don’t believe in the idea of mandatory face time, if that makes sense. I think it’s more if you have work that needs to get done, we expect it to get done.”
Kolbe said she used to come into the office nearly every weekend until around two years ago, when she had a child. She said she found it productive to be there when other people weren’t around, so she could catch up on e-mails and other work without having to take any meetings. “I don’t know if I was inadvertently sending a message to people that because I was here, they needed to be here,” she said. “Now that I look back, I don’t know. I would’ve hoped they would’ve stayed home so I could get my stuff done.”
And what of other studios? Some who currently work for Rockstar North have shared positive experiences, both on Twitter and privately with Kotaku, outside of those in the scripting or design department, who say they’ve been hit pretty hard by crunch on Red Dead Redemption 2. One current Rockstar North staffer said their hours have ranged from 40 all the way up to 80 per week during crunch. “I love working there, during my time I’ve had multiple promotions, get to make great games and I feel the pay is ok/good,” they said in an e-mail. “Outside of crunch hours the job is amazing.” A second current Rockstar North staffer described a bleaker situation: “Not once have I approached 100 hour weeks, even in the worst of crunch. I have, however, been on a steady death march of mostly mandated 50-60 hour weeks for quite honestly years.“
(To conceptualize this, a 50-hour week would be five 10-hour days, say 10am to 8pm. A 60-hour week would add a full Saturday or Sunday to one’s work schedule.)
Two current employees at Rockstar New England, which is located in Andover, Massachusetts, both shared glowing stories. “I really can’t imagine working at another game company at this point,” said one. “I’m working on the best products with amazingly talented people using the best tools and pipeline in the industry under a company that puts the quality of the game above anything else. I’m also working very reasonable hours and I’m very well off financially. It’s a comfortable and exciting career, and they take care of us.” A third, also at Rockstar New England, said they loved working at the company but that they’d been told to work 55- to 60-hour weeks during crunch over the past year.
In San Diego, some said things have changed drastically from the days of the first Red Dead Redemption and that anonymous letter from employees’ spouses, while others said they’ve felt pressured to work nights and weekends. Two current staffers each said they’d been asked to work more hours, although they weren’t given specific guidelines or quotas. “It’s a culture thing,” said one. “You’re going out to lunch and everyone’s talking about work hours—how many hours you’ve done, how many you’ve logged in. The culture values being a workaholic.”
Some Rockstar staff said they were paid annual salaries, so they didn’t get any extra money for putting in hours on top of their standard schedules. Others said they were paid hourly, although several said they’d compared their wages to those co-workers making annual salaries and found that they’d have to work overtime just to make the same amount. (The people on annual salaries tended to be more senior, so it follows that they were paid more.)
And then there’s Rockstar Lincoln. Of all of the current Rockstar employees who reached out to tell their stories, nearly a dozen worked at Lincoln. More than a dozen former employees from that office also chimed in with their own experiences, painting a bleak picture. Even some current staff who worked at other offices and told me they had positive experiences at Rockstar acknowledged that Lincoln had serious issues. If crunch culture is a problem across Rockstar, then at Rockstar Lincoln, it appears to be an epidemic.
At many game studios, there’s one department on the very bottom of the totem pole, a place where it’s tough to get a lot of respect: Quality Assurance, or QA, where people play different sections of the game in as many ways as possible, trying to find all of the bugs. Although QA testers are essential to the success of a game, they’re also seen by many game studios as low-skilled and dispensable.
Rockstar has a few QA departments, but a large number of its testers work at one particular office: Rockstar Lincoln, located in the English city of the same name. Current and former employees of Rockstar Lincoln describe it as a tough place to work, one where the testers are paid low wages, asked to work extremely long hours, and subject to strict security practices.
“The QA department at Rockstar Lincoln has been working mandatory OT since August 2017,” said one current employee. “In October 2017 we officially began our crunch and have been in this crunch since to this date.” As Rockstar has confirmed, Lincoln’s testers have been asked to work on evenings and weekends since then, starting with three nights a week and later moving up to five, and starting with one weekend day per month and later moving up to every weekend. Anyone who wanted a two-day weekend would have to work an extra weekend day on another week, which meant 12 straight days of work between days off.
Even before then, however, some staff said they were working overtime. Some explained that testers were hired on a temporary contract basis, and they’d felt compelled to work extra hours in order to get permanent jobs. “A large amount of staff are on rolling temporary contracts and live in the hope that they will be extended and able to pay rent as the end of their contract approaches,” said one current tester. “I don’t feel like anyone is comfortable speaking out in the hopes that they can be extended long enough to be made permanent. Staff are often reminded how lucky they are, simply to be working for Rockstar.”
“The QA department at Rockstar Lincoln has been working mandatory OT since August 2017.” – Current Rockstar employee
“I have never suffered from depression before working at Rockstar,” said a former Lincoln tester. “Now some time after leaving it’s a recurring issue for me… One tester who worked below me told me he had gone to the doctor for help dealing with depression, was asked where he worked and when he replied Rockstar, the doctor said. ‘For god’s sake, another one.’” Two different spouses of Rockstar Lincoln employees contacted me to share stories, saying they hadn’t seen much of their partners lately.
Others said they had positive experiences as well, with one current Rockstar tester even calling it “the greatest place I have ever worked,” outside of the crunch. But, they said, “This type of work should never be placed on people to maintain over the course of an entire year and beyond.”
Only some of Lincoln’s testers were paid overtime. People working in the localization department received annual salaries, as did lead testers, creating an uncomfortable situation where some testers were getting paid more than their leads. Some told me they didn’t want promotions as a result.
On top of the overtime, those who work or have worked at Rockstar Lincoln describe restrictions they saw as unfair. Three testers said they weren’t allowed their cell phones at their desks during the work day, and had to put them in lockers before starting their shifts, which made it difficult to deal with doctor’s appointments or other essential activities aside from their breaks. Two said that after a tester spotted a drone that might have been filming through the windows, they were no longer allowed to open the blinds at night. Testers said they weren’t allowed to eat hot food at their desks—desks that were shared between day- and night-shift employees.
Rockstar’s Jennifer Kolbe confirmed these details, saying in an e-mail, “We believe that the vast majority of our team in Lincoln feels positively about work conditions there, and these specific difficulties mentioned are either not generally considered real hardships or are not based on any current reality.”
For some, that was certainly the case—except for the hours. “Ultimately, the job is a good job,” said one former tester. “And Rockstar is a good company to work for. When it’s not crunch, it’s not a bad place at all. The money’s alright, there’s a bonus at the end of the year. It’s just that crunch practically kills people.”
In conversations, some testers said they’d missed out on important events and time with their families due to this crunch. Others said their hours were monitored down to the minute, with managers reacting harshly to any missed time. One former Lincoln tester said they’d arrived late at work one day due to a heavy snowstorm that had led other businesses in the area to shut down. “There was no, ‘Thanks for making it in,’” the tester said. “It was, ‘Can you work back that?’”
“I feel like I’m going to need to get to know my partner again,” said a current tester.
On Friday, October 19, Rockstar Lincoln told its staff that overtime would no longer be mandatory. Although Kolbe characterized this as a clarification of a previous policy, and said it hadn’t been mandatory before, nearly a dozen current and former Rockstar Lincoln employees have reached out to Kotaku since then to say otherwise. All said that this overtime was a regular part of their schedule, and one even said they had received e-mails using the word “mandatory” to describe crunch.
In an e-mail on Monday, Kolbe offered more clarification: “We have spoken with the Lincoln team to make sure it’s clear that the scheduled extra time is requested, and yes we have only been requesting what we feel is really needed to get this game finished at the quality level we need. From talking to our team last week, we have heard that there were references to ‘mandatory’ overtime from some managers. At the same time we don’t believe that was a blanket message for the Lincoln team, and that is borne out by the comments from some that while they knew it was not in fact mandatory, they felt an obligation to do it. Either way, it is clear to us that our communication has not been perfect and we take responsibility for the situations in which the team has been confused or has received confusing messages from us. We have pushed hard over the last years to build and optimize the structure of our QA team, including doubling the size of the permanent team since 2014 and introducing scheduled day and night shifts so that we can increasingly avoid asking the QA team to work overtime. We will continue to make progress on that.”
“Some of us on dayshift feel a bit cheated by the averaged out hours,” said a current Lincoln employee in an e-mail last weekend. “It diminishes the work we’ve put in, if some higher-up tries to gloss over or down-play the actual hours we were forced to crunch. Rockstar doesn’t need to use such underhanded tactics to make themselves look slightly better, all they should do is resolve the issue at hand—which they have started to, credit where credit’s due.”
Some at Rockstar Lincoln are optimistic about the change to optional overtime, although two lead testers have lamented the fact that their extra hours remain unpaid. “While I’m still a bit skeptical as to whether this voluntary overtime can remain free of peer pressure/job security/’passion’ anxieties, it’s comforting to see leads/supervisors commit to no more than two overtime shifts per week and two weekend shifts a month,” said the current employee. “Especially considering how much we were supposed to be crunching in November. Now I’m in control of how much I can work, it feels great. I’ll actually have meaningful free time in an evening!”
“Some of us on dayshift feel a bit cheated by the averaged out hours.” – Current Rockstar tester
From people across all of Rockstar’s studios, we’ve heard mixed feelings: Pride at having worked on a game like Red Dead Redemption 2. Weariness after putting in so many hours. And anger that Rockstar’s management has seemingly downplayed the crunch in public over the past week.
As Rockstar’s approach to work has made headlines over the past couple of weeks, the company has tried to get on top of things by taking some unusual steps. Normally a secretive institution that would prefer the press stay away and their developers not talk publicly about their jobs, Rockstar last week made the unprecedented move of allowing its developers to speak publicly about work conditions. It also opened up its doors to Kotaku—in a particularly unconventional way.
It was cold last Thursday when I went down to Rockstar’s office in SoHo, Manhattan at the company’s invitation. Rockstar had learned that I was working on this story earlier in October, a week before Houser’s comments set off public discussion of crunch culture, and said it would make its employees available for interviews. Over the course of a few conversations, some of Rockstar’s top people, including head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe, told me that they took this issue very seriously and wanted to make sure I had a chance to speak to staff on the ground at all of their studios.
What followed was one of the strangest interview experiences I’ve ever had. Rockstar’s head of PR and communications, Simon Ramsey, sat with me at a table in a fourth-floor conference room. Ramsey said we’d be video-chatting with staff from all across the world, and after some brief technical issues, we were faced with two boxes on a screen. In one box, on the left, two employees sat on a couch at Rockstar New England. In another box, on the right, three Rockstar North employees also sat on a couch. They all wore casual clothes, some adorned with Red Dead Redemption logos and slogans. We exchanged quick introductions, and then I was given free rein to interview them about their work-life balances and crunch experiences. All five of them. At once.
Over the next two hours, the company also brought in groups from Rockstar San Diego, Rockstar Lincoln, and Rockstar Toronto, a mix of junior and senior employees. Rockstar said I could quote them but asked that I not use any of their names.
It’s difficult to gauge whether someone’s being completely candid about their work experiences when they’re on a video chat with a group of their co-workers, a journalist, and the company’s head of PR. Still, the 12 employees who spoke to me on these calls offered perspectives that are worth sharing, much like those who publicly tweeted about their experiences.
“I know when I feel like I need to put in the extra time—you certainly have weeks when you feel like you’re going to have a lot more hours than others,” said one Rockstar New England employee. “The other side of it is that it’s been very easy for me to balance my work life and my personal life.”
“I’ve worked one day of the weekend in five years,” said a lead at Rockstar North, noting that things had changed drastically for them since the development of Grand Theft Auto V. “I’ve got people who just want to go home at 5 p.m., and that’s not an issue… I see in the company that we’ve changed, and that people feel more like they’re being treated well, but there are still some cultures that remain from the old days.”
“Out of all those projects, Red Dead Redemption 2 has been the easiest I’ve experienced personally,” said one Rockstar San Diego employee. “Core hours, including lunch, would be nine hours. I’d say I probably get in an extra two hours on top of that most times. During crunch I probably put in another hour or two on top of that.”
“Nobody’s ever told me, ‘You need to work X amount of hours,’” said a Rockstar Toronto employee. “We will on occasion be asked if we have availability on weekends.”
After one of these calls, Ramsey turned to me and asked what I thought so far. I told him that I believed these stories but was skeptical that anyone could be transparent under interview circumstances like this. He seemed surprised.
This tracks with my encounters with Rockstar higher-ups over the past week. While they’ve made efforts to discuss the allegations of overwork and have loosened restrictions on their employees speaking up, I’ve not gotten much sense that they see that workers will inevitably fear retaliation from bosses, no matter how much those bosses say they can speak freely. It’s human nature. In an e-mail sent to Rockstar employees this past weekend, Rockstar North studio co-head Rob Nelson said that a few people had mentioned wanting some place to submit their thoughts anonymously, and that the company was looking into setting that up. That will undoubtedly inspire more candid feedback.
What plenty of Rockstar employees say they believe, even those who spoke to me privately, is that things have changed for the better since the days of the first Red Dead Redemption. It’s a sentiment that Rockstar’s Kolbe also shared, when I asked her if she thought crunch was sustainable.
“I think we’ve realized that it’s not sustainable,” she said, “but I don’t necessarily think we realized it through burnout. I think we’ve realized it through having children, because I think that naturally means you’re going to work less hours. I think even for the people who don’t have children, who have gone through crunch periods on other games, they approach the game they then go onto next a little differently. Because no matter who you are, your health is a concern to you. I think everyone approaches each new project with the goal of: It’s got to be better than what I did last time.”
Kolbe added that many members of her team have worked together for 15 to 20 years. “We want to continue working together, but we also know that certainly as you get older, it gets harder,” she said. “We’re dealing now with the generation after mine. They have very different ideas about work-life balance than my generation has, and they are bringing that into the company, and I think that’s a positive thing. They probably think we’re all crazy, but I think it actually has changed our ideas of how you can work.”
Just how much has changed at Rockstar depends who you ask. During the Red Dead 1 days, at least, life at Rockstar appealed to a certain type of person—a workaholic, one who loved the thought of spending long hours with their co-workers, pushing as hard as possible to finish the gargantuan, ambitious projects that have made Rockstar one of the most beloved companies in games. Some employees compared it to a family. One described making games at Rockstar as feeling like fighting a war together. Others used the words Stockholm Syndrome.
“If you’re really passionate about the game and working there, and want to prioritize that over your life, it’s a really great place,” said a former Rockstar San Diego employee. “But if you want to prioritize your life, it’s not.”
One lead at another major game studio told me that in the last few weeks he’d interviewed two different candidates from Rockstar. He asked why they were looking to leave. "[They] said, ‘If you work at Rockstar, it is expected you have no life outside of Rockstar,’” he told me.
What’s become clear over the past week is that many of those who work and have worked for Rockstar—even those who have had positive experiences—want things to change. They want a better atmosphere for themselves and their colleagues, one where overtime is an exception rather than the rule, and where working on a dream game doesn’t mean burning themselves out.
Or, at the very least, they want a future where all employees are paid for their extra hours.
“I’m not writing because I want to harm the company or the game,” said one current employee in a recent e-mail. “I’m proud of both and I stand by them. I think the incredible amount of time and effort put into the game will show and I can’t wait for people to see it next week. I’m writing because I think this is a unique opportunity to raise our voices against the insanity of crunch, and that Rockstar really could change for the better as a result. If that happens, maybe other studios will follow suit.”
Some fans have asked if they should avoid buying or playing Red Dead Redemption 2 to show support for those who had tough experiences making it, but many of Rockstar’s current and former employees—even those who had the worst things to say about the company—say they’re against the idea. For one, those who put long weeks into the game want people to see what they’ve done. Also, given that this year’s bonuses will be based on royalties, any sort of large-scale boycott may hurt Rockstar employees more than it helps, some current employees have said. What fans can instead do, those people say, is speak out about crunch and workplace issues like this, helping put public pressure on the company.
On Friday, Rockstar will release Red Dead Redemption 2, and next month, it will launch Red Dead Online, which some current employees are now crunching to finish. Then, Rockstar will move on to new projects. The work of making video games at Rockstar will continue, and it is unclear how much the process of creating them will change.
Is it possible to make great art without unreasonable sacrifice? That’s a question that’s haunted the video game industry for decades, and it’s one that remains difficult if not impossible to definitively answer. Can Rockstar continue to make great games without putting in the crunch hours that have been so pervasive in its long history of successful art? Is crunch just, as CD Projekt Red CEO Marcin Iwiński once told me in an interview about his studio’s mega-hit The Witcher 3, a “necessary evil” in game development? These are questions that will be debated for years to come. For now, at least, many hope that by coming together to share their stories, they can push for some change at Rockstar Games.
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