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Rockstar grants permission to current devs to talk about company on social media
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
At this point he must be trolling, his comments read like he's trying to rile people up.
What some folks should understand is that buying (or not) RDR2 is not the way to tackle this. It doesn't make you a bad or good person. BUT you should care about the conditions your favorite developers work in. Even from a selfish standpoint (ie I dont care about them, give me my games), you should care because that means more great games for you to play.
So Rockstar grants permission for current employees to defend them on Twitter, and who knows maybe those folks have nothing but positive experiences there, or maybe they see it as a good opportunity to ingratiate themselves with the higher ups. Fact is nobody who currently works there is going to suddenly take to Twitter to talk about bad working conditions publicly, and then get immediately fired. This screams opportunistic AF to me, and it shouldn't silence the criticisms one bit.
Especially since what seems like 95% of the people speaking out are from Rockstar North, not Rockstar San Diego, which was the one that had the lawsuit all those years ago.
What I'm saying is that we should take a hard stance on crunch. IG, for example, takes a very hard stance on it. It isn't normalized at all. It isn't glamorized. They are horror stories, not sources of pride.
Work/Life balance is extremely important here. A large reason for that is because many experienced terrible practices and never want others to experience it again. From my experience, the times that we've ever done OT were only for maybe 2 hours extra for at most 3 days... if that. I wouldn't consider that crunch at all and it is such an irregular experience (once in 5 years) it almost isn't even worth mentioning.
No.
You are assuming they are getting less work done and/or are an unproductive worker requiring extra time to finish tasks. That is not typically the reality. Development isn't some strict science, it's also art. When does something look good enough or "look just right?" You don't know until you've achieved it. It's not something that can have a hard timeline on. And, there is also the fact that projects have deadlines and if those deadlines aren't meant then features have to be cut. If you're a developer working on a really cool feature you've thought of such as Gwent or the Suicide Mission in ME2, well the whole game isn't going to be held up for one feature. If said feature isn't working by a specific deadline then it's going to get cut. So, that leaves you with two to options if you see you won't make the deadline under normal hours, accept your baby of a feature will be cut or spend a week or so working extra hours to get it to work and implemented into the final game.
I work about 40-50 hours a week. Sometimes 60 and on weekends when we are doing major changes and revision testing and I am not a game developer.
it depends on how many multi-quotes of said person who has the avatar does at once
Why are ppl trying to get on high horses... Seriously a vast majority of our favorite products are manufactured in conditions that would make 100 hour weeks look like paradise in comparison.
Stop with that hypocritical shit.
Because acceptance is worse than understanding conditions and trying to improve then through vocal shifting?
Nobody are saying this is an issue only affecting the game industry.
It's not about acceptance, its about person A throwing stones at person B for doing something, while person A is doing the same damn thing.
If you want to help make a change fine, but dont try to insult/offend someone else with a hypocritical sense of morality.
Pretty much.
Yep, that doesn't even register on the crunch radar, a little paid overtime on rare occasions isn't a problem. The issue is when people are normalizing 60+ hour weeks, saying they only did 70-100h a few weeks because of deadlines and that they were never 'forced' and only worked that much because they wanted to make the best game they could. The latter completely discredits how that sort of behavior shapes a studio's work culture and makes people believe crunch is essential to deliver a quality product.
The mental toll alone from working 60h+ per week for years at a time is not to be ignored. It also doesn't contribute to any sort of healthy work-life balance; we're talking about 12h per day and then you can add commute on top, see how much time that leaves you. It really doesn't matter whether they're doing them because they're passionate about their work or because they feel pressured to do so, it's important to understand it's neither healthy nor productive.
Just wait for Jason Schreier's Kotaku article about this to give some much needed perspective to this whole situation.
"We've been looking into and reporting on workplace conditions at game studios for years now, and specifically Rockstar for a few months. For that story, we have been granting anonymity to both current and former employees in order to ensure they feel comfortable speaking candidly. We've heard a wide range of experiences and will publish the story when it's ready."
"We've been looking into and reporting on workplace conditions at game studios for years now, and specifically Rockstar for a few months. For that story, we have been granting anonymity to both current and former employees in order to ensure they feel comfortable speaking candidly. We've heard a wide range of experiences and will publish the story when it's ready."
With the apparent lack of attention span some users have been displaying in here, repetition just might help the point stick ;)
Yeah, it's fucking bonkers, right? I mean, making valid points and also having an opinion?
It's anarchy!!
Neither do you, epitome of hypocritical judgement.
I majored in Art and Commercial Design - I'm more than qualified to remember which talented artists throughout history have suffered mental illnesses.
Can we please stop this farcical dogpile on Rockstar?!?
I can get behind this. Im just annoyed with the backlash the initial quote caused
No?
Rockstar is fairly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, the topic is much bigger than they are, but they happen to be someone who clearly either have had, or still have, issues - which they have freely admitted. They are not alone, nor are they likely worse than an endless amount of other companies. Makes sense to focus on their experience right here and now however.
Sounds like the Amazon people who get benefits for speaking positively of the company on social media
It was a big issue on RDR1 if i recall regarding worker treatment, and i see no changes that would imply that Rockstar is any better of a place to survive these days.
It was a big issue on RDR1 if i recall regarding worker treatment, and i see no changes that would imply that Rockstar is any better of a place to survive these days.
By and large, people are not complaining about the notion of working overtime when necessary to meet specific, well-defined goals by specific deadlines. That kind of overtime is more often referred to as "sprints", afaik.
The problem is that studios with crunch culture aren't sprinting towards well-defined finish lines; they are treating crunch as the "default" mode of operation for much of, or even the entire, duration of a project. And because games are an art this is an insane way of doing things. Even if there were no degradation in work quality during crunch, you can't just throw man-hours at a creative project and expect to get the best results. Creative challenges require room to step back, look at the big picture, think about why that feature you're working on isn't panning out, and if maybe you're taking the wrong approach.
Continual crunch only makes sense if you have indefatigable workers doing completely rote work. In other words, if you have already automated the work and it is being done by computers.
It's a good thing if most Rockstar employees say they don't have to deal with crunch. Unquestionably.
...But why are so many of you so excited to trash people who were upset that the opposite might be true? People SHOULD have been upset. 100 hours a week is in-fucking-sane--a condition no one should have to work under unless they're like...an owner or co-owner or something. And even then someone should probably tell those people to go home and get some freaking sleep.
If you want to buy Red Dead 2, then you should do that. Even if the 100 hours thing is true--for fuck's sake, especially if it is. It'd be a crime if someone threw away multiple 100 hour weeks only for no one to buy it. But just because other people don't want to or feel uncomfortable doing so doesn't make them "fake" or that they're on a high horse.
...But why are so many of you so excited to trash people who were upset that the opposite might be true? People SHOULD have been upset. 100 hours a week is in-fucking-sane--a condition no one should have to work under unless they're like...an owner or co-owner or something. And even then someone should probably tell those people to go home and get some freaking sleep.
If you want to buy Red Dead 2, then you should do that. Even if the 100 hours thing is true--for fuck's sake, especially if it is. It'd be a crime if someone threw away multiple 100 hour weeks only for no one to buy it. But just because other people don't want to or feel uncomfortable doing so doesn't make them "fake" or that they're on a high horse.
This is beautifully said. This is exactly what people need to understand here.
Aye yeah, no.
I'm not saying that Rockstar is evil or forces their employees to work 100's of hours or bullies people.
But no one who still works in a place is gonna go on Twitter and say they're being treated like shit there. Only an absolute idiot would believe that there'd be no consequences.
Who the hell's gonna say "my current supervisor is an asshole that makes me work longer than i want?"
To employ a frankly trite and overused phrase that is accurate in this case: it's stanning, pure and simple. You're absolutely right, this is an instance where people should be concerned. But there are a ton of people who don't want to be and will look for any reason not to be. Once they have that reason, anyone who says otherwise is a hater or part of an internet outrage mob or whatever. It's just fandom.
I'm not disagreeing with any of this, I was responding to the notion that an employee that chooses to essentially "live at work" should be fired because they are inherently "unproductive."
I mainly commenting on how that isn't shenanigans as that is a typical hour spread in work weeks with salary employees.
Post was most likely sarcastic.
Aye yeah, no.
I'm not saying that Rockstar is evil or forces their employees to work 100's of hours or bullies people.
But no one who still works in a place is gonna go on Twitter and say they're being treated like shit there. Only an absolute idiot would believe that there'd be no consequences.
Who the hell's gonna say "my current supervisor is an asshole that makes me work longer than i want?"
But wouldn't it also still be one of the first things you would do when the things that are said about your company arent true?
To remove the restrictions for your employees to talk freely about work conditions?
I don't disagree with your point, but one thing does not rule out the other.
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Lol?
Great response - and to you I say Lol.
Good one.
Is yours?
What an inane response.
The company allowing employees to post on twitter and then the convenient "well thats never happened to me" tweets is just pure damage control. To be honest this controversy isn't going to affect sales numbers at all but they had to address it somehow and this is their way of doing so. By letting pre-determined employees tweet on their 5 hour a day work experiences I guess this puts the situation to rest for them.
Yeah sure, absolutely. But if you're one of those employees then someone's still metaphorically looking over your shoulder.
I'm sure no one's forced to do overtime but if it's like any business in the world it'd generally be a matter of "Well if you're not working overtime Timmy I guess you don't really care about Red Dead 2... we'll keep that in mind for our next project..." and they get crap shifts and positions in future.
There's a lot of passive-aggressive punishments employers can do.
You've made your points. Stop this back and forth and let the conversation continue. Thank you.
OP
OP
Change did happen. R* is not making one game per year like they did 10 years ago.
Rockstar released a game every year last gen. This is their first game since 2013. Things has change since RDR1 days.
No. They allowed every employee to talk about their experience.
One cannot outright dismiss these claims which have been thrown at Rockstar in the past. They have a history of this sort of behavior. Even if you haven't been affected by it.
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I see no reason to believe anyone who is currently working at Rockstar on this issue given that their's a lot of incentives to being positive even if it's a lie, and a lot of things disincentivizing negativity even if it's the truth
We should, i agree.
But we should do that when we have solid information OR demand that working conditions and ethics are made public. For every company which products we buy, not just vg btw.
There's nothing here.
This stat means nothing. It's total average hours, meaning it also includes workers that are part time.
I just don't get why someone needs to fan the drama fire more than what's needed. We're having current employees saying everything has become MUCH better the last 8-10 years, we're having people say the long crunches aren't anything like the ones of old, even since GTAV - the company has released reports saying the average week is between 42.4 and 45.8 hours - it is clearly trying to better things as they slowed down the releases.
But no, we're still calling for boycotts, assuming bad faith, blaming employees for talking up the company, looking at wording, saying everything is PR, trying to find similarities between what they write (that french tweet is pathetic). People are mixing in the larger picture in a specific instance. Rockstar isn't a saint, and they were bloody terrible before, but we're treating them like they are the worst ever when everything is pointing to them actually making things better. It's like you want them to be horrible.
He's talking about RDR2... He joined Rockstar in 2013, three years after RDR1 came out.
Well said.
What I also find strange is the singling out of R*. Are people really that naive to think R* are the only ones who has workers who work very long hours.
What about playground games, Naughty dog, sony santa monica, the coalition etc
This outrage reeks of hypocrisy, I bet if accusations were put on the favorite devs of the people placing accusations on R* It would be a different story.