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Rockstar employees were working "100 hour weeks" for RDR 2 [UPDATE: Rockstar's response]
- Thread starter Odesu
- Start date
It makes me wonder if some of you (yourself included) actually have any perspective in life. It's a video game. It's not life or death. If it doesn't come out in 2018 then nobody is gonna die. There are very few situations where this kind of work schedule is ever acceptable. This is not one of them. I can't speak to your personal experience but unless this was a life or death situation then you are a sucker and you got duped.
I'll go out on a limb and say developers didn't agree to any deadline, management did. So you are faulting developers for management failures.
I think most people on here have had a job where they have to hit project dates and deadlines... People are familiar with what a grind looks like. Work isn't easy. Everyone understands that. The kind of expected and sustained crunch that has been brought into the forefront of discussion within these past couple of days is a different kind of grind and comes with different complex issues. A dialogue is necessary and helpful.
Did you quote me by mistake? I'm not boycotting it. I wish I had the strength of my vague socialist convictions to do that!
Regarding your first point: Given the extent of terrible labour practices the world over (even outside of the games industry), its nearly impossible to be a completely ethical consumer. We can, however, pick and choose our battles, and I don't think it is hypocritical to do so.
There's working hard and then there's stuff like this. No one should have to work that hard and justifying it doesn't help.
More resources / staff should be hired or utilized to ensure the load doesn't require people working 100 hours a week under the pump.
Pretending for a moment that I believe you say this from experience, what people are arguing in this thread is that just because this is how it's always worked doesn't mean it's how it should work. How about we don't exploit human beings and treat them like a commodity to be chewed up and spit out? I mean, we already know that the sustained periods of insane hours of some AAA game studios isn't necessary or even optimal to making games on a schedule, so this project deadline stuff is proven horseshit. Why not implement changes to working conditions that have proven to be very effective in other companies like EA? Why make a stand on this shitty corporate apologist hill when we already know that better work conditions yield better results and higher retention? This isn't speculation. We know that there's no benefit to extended crunch, and that it's always a result of poor management and definitely not the fault of the exploited workers.
Sounds like you had a shitty manager that should have hired more staff.
What saddens me in this the most is that people who get into this industry are mostly relatively young. Too young to understand the importance of priorities and balance in life. It's easy to punish your body with overworking in your twenties, but it will come back to bite you in the end. It's easy to fool yourself to think you are "doing good" if you put completely yourself to your work ambitions, only to wake up too late to realize the most important thing in your life are the people in it.
My father was a workaholic and he regrets it now, but it's too late to go back. My brothers and me grew up mostly without a father. We knew his work was more important than us. I'm telling you, no game in the world is worth that.
My father was a workaholic and he regrets it now, but it's too late to go back. My brothers and me grew up mostly without a father. We knew his work was more important than us. I'm telling you, no game in the world is worth that.
You mean line the pockets of some arsewipe who is exploiting you. They should hire more workers and balance out the shifts instead of pushing the current staff to the line.
Do you guys think crunch shouldn't exist at all?
I'm genuinely interested.
I think I read that The Last of Us wasn't good till they were in crunch or something.
Is there a place for it? Does management just need to control it better? Where is the line, when does it become too much?
I'll admit, I work far more hours on my work than I should. I'm an artist, you get attached, you want your work to represent your standards. I guess I never considered that by staying late I was actually creating a toxic work environment for people who have families and or simply want to do other shit.
With that said, I generally always stay late if I can.
1. I want to make my shit better.
2. Big fan of more money — mortgage, insurance, etc
100 hour weeks sounds insane, but I do 60 hour weeks without ever had considered it being unhealthy so what the hell do I know.
I'm not saying it's okay, I'm just sayin that everyone handles longer work hours differently, and I'm starting to see that I may be creating a toxic work environment by normalizing longer hours.
Damn.
(I don't work in games, but still, never thought about till now)
I'm genuinely interested.
I think I read that The Last of Us wasn't good till they were in crunch or something.
Is there a place for it? Does management just need to control it better? Where is the line, when does it become too much?
I'll admit, I work far more hours on my work than I should. I'm an artist, you get attached, you want your work to represent your standards. I guess I never considered that by staying late I was actually creating a toxic work environment for people who have families and or simply want to do other shit.
With that said, I generally always stay late if I can.
1. I want to make my shit better.
2. Big fan of more money — mortgage, insurance, etc
100 hour weeks sounds insane, but I do 60 hour weeks without ever had considered it being unhealthy so what the hell do I know.
I'm not saying it's okay, I'm just sayin that everyone handles longer work hours differently, and I'm starting to see that I may be creating a toxic work environment by normalizing longer hours.
Damn.
(I don't work in games, but still, never thought about till now)
Now imagine doing it for a year straight, and you'll undestand why people are upset.
yes
what if people worked hard so their employers couldn't treat them like shit?
He didn't say there were only 3 weeks of crunch. He said there was 3 weeks of 100h+ crunch.
Working for more than 7-8 hours per day is well-documented to lead to physical ill, and does not increase your productivity. Why do you defend this practice? What's wrong with you?
In my experience, some people take it as a badge of honor to talk about how many hours they work, how few hours of sleep they need per night. I'm starting to think that it should be treated the same as inappropriate sexual behavior in the workspace, as both lead to extremely toxic environments.
Yeah I really don't get that mentality. One or two days of overtime/crunch sure, unforeseen delays and problems do occur but if it's clear that the current crew can't handle the load, either workers are goldbricking or there's not enough people working. Ultimately it's a management problem, either get workers working better, get more workers to carry the load or start refusing jobs. It's not a badge of honour for employees to cover for their boss.
For me, I'm in at 8:30 and out by 5:00. If I want overtime pay, I work weekends.
Moral questions aside (we've all bought/still buying products manufactured under much worse conditions) I wonder what can be done about it.
In this particular case the game has been in development for how long ? Was it 6 years ?
Couldn't crunch be more evenly spread across a few more months ? Should publishers be more conservative with release dates ? that wouldn't help I think, as crunch needs to happen when a game is basically completed and devs would keep working on it until the very last second available regardless..
I'm sure projects can be handled differently though.
In this particular case the game has been in development for how long ? Was it 6 years ?
Couldn't crunch be more evenly spread across a few more months ? Should publishers be more conservative with release dates ? that wouldn't help I think, as crunch needs to happen when a game is basically completed and devs would keep working on it until the very last second available regardless..
I'm sure projects can be handled differently though.
I think projects like that often suffers with feature creep and keep adding more stuf along the way. Combining it with "reinventing the wheel" almost every project have, it's very hard to project of needed workhours. Of course it should be management role to step in and say enough is enough. Imagine how many hours was spent to implement horse testicle shrinking so R* could get all those articles paising them for unparallel attention to detail. That was more important than wellbeing of their employees.
I do not defend it. There are periods of time where work has to be done. The key word is "period of time". No one is able to permanently work, but sometimes it is required. Capitalism has its toll...
Coming back to topic: a project this large and the ambition that Rockstar has, this is somewhere to be expected, as hard as it sounds.
An 8hr workday is the average in the U.S. I don't know of anyone physically ill because they had to work 8hr Days.
People have to make ends meet, or want nicer things for their family. To send their kids to college. Do you believe wages are good enough that someone can afford these things working 7-8hrs?
I would love to live in your world where I could work 35hrs, get a full night's rest every single night, and be well off financially.
Today on the Bombcast both Brad Shoemaker and Jeff Gerstmann confirmed that all they hear from working at Rockstar is hell on earth, and they're not surprised by all the statements released.
I still remember their reason for not being able to port RDR to PC was because the code was a mess... There are so many red flags of poor management and time crunch. It's a perfect example of how this stuff ultimately hurts in the long run. They could've easily put out a PC version of RDR and it would've sold like hotcakes.
With a company so well known as Rockstar, there's no doubt in my mind that they could make things better for employees while also making better games. Give employees more time to breathe and the games might be less buggier and more fun.
With a company so well known as Rockstar, there's no doubt in my mind that they could make things better for employees while also making better games. Give employees more time to breathe and the games might be less buggier and more fun.
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And this is just admitting that your society has failed the common person (I don't live in US). What you as a collective fail to realise is that you are for all intents and purposes treated as slaves, where a normal work day is barely enough to have a functional life. Want to send your kids to college, want a slightly nicer comfort? Work more, decrease your life span, be away more from your family.
Your wages aren't enough for a basic life style, purely because it has been decided that it should be like that. You have an enormous difference in income, with money congregating in fewer and fewer individuals. While of course the system is more complex than saying it's a zero-sum game, that's a clear indicator that something is wrong.
You are blinded by the success of few, who keep chanting the mantra that the more you work, the more you will get.
The sad thing is that this is so well documented. There is tons of literature about this, yet people continue to be blinded by it and defend it.
Tell me something I don't know. I could tell you weren't from the U.S, although you didn't mention where you're from?
I live in Finland. The Average Joe working for 7-8 hours a day is making the ends meet, having "nice things", enough time to rest, several weeks holiday each year and a free college for the kids. Americans work their asses off to line line someone else's pockets and I'll never understand why. There's also a difference in priorities, Americans seem to put more value on material things, like they are actually things that *matter*.
Family life is always better enhanced with time spent together, not things. A big house, a car, more stuff... That's not what life is about!
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Are they on record talking about working 100-hour weeks?
Are they making such a ridiculous amount of money that it's mind boggling they can't improve their work conditions?
Have they had similar controversies to the one, say, Rockstar San Diego had?
Are former/current employees regularly painting their work culture as absolutely terrible, along the lines we see with Rockstar?
"No ethical consumption under capitalism" doesn't mean your response to every situation has to be uniform, or that you've lost your ability to criticize or react to ethical problems. Obviously the issue of crunch is prevalent in AAA development, along with other labor issues, but that doesn't at all imply some false dichotomy where you either entirely embrace AAA games or entirely disentangle yourself from them.
If you call out bad practices, you're being a better consumer than most. If you're struggling with this at all, you're being a better consumer than most. If you have the mere capacity to skip an otherwise desirable game once in awhile because of ethical concerns, you're being a better consumer than most.
Doing those things doesn't obligate you to retreat to some impossible bubble where none of your exchanges happen in a capitalistic context. We're all participants in an unjust system, but if that gives you any obligations at all, it's to create some space for improvement.
This has been known forever. RDR 1 was a nightmare to work at. Remember the Rockstar Wives controversy?
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Rock...Diego_employees_have_collected_themselves.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Rock...Diego_employees_have_collected_themselves.php
I think it's more a question of USA being behind the rest of the developed countries... Or more like being pulled back. I don't think the previous generation of your country had to have two adults doing two jobs on order to afford a reasonable standard of living for a family.
In general, the conditions for publishers to exploit their staff are pretty good: Most staff is young, enthusiastic and willing to devote themselves fully to the project. They are contract-based, so they will want to do well to stay beyond the release of the game. Not the perfect conditions to speak up and question things too early. There's not really something like investigative video games journalism either that would look much beyond game reviews and top 100 lists. And then there are not many strong labour unions around especially in the US. There are varieties of capitalism as we call them in science. I do wonder whether European publishers and devs in general do fare a bit better, given there are more labour unions around here.
It would actually deserve a scientific study, but would be hard to pull off.
I personally won't get RDR2 now, but had decided so a couple days ago. Will definitely support devs that have been awarded with good working conditions even more than before, day 1.
It would actually deserve a scientific study, but would be hard to pull off.
I personally won't get RDR2 now, but had decided so a couple days ago. Will definitely support devs that have been awarded with good working conditions even more than before, day 1.
Usually crunch times are mostly at the tail end of development. some companies do crunch 13-14 hours day 80 hours week M-F sometimes saturday too for few weeks before game is done.
But again these are mostly at the tail end of dev, but theres people at rockstar who worked on Rdr2 who were in crunch before the game was even half done
But again these are mostly at the tail end of dev, but theres people at rockstar who worked on Rdr2 who were in crunch before the game was even half done
This is a good point; 'crunch time' loses all meaning when it becomes standard practice. 'Crunch culture' or something would be a better descriptor.
This is a failure on management cuz most people don't do this. This right here is what you call bullshit
If there is a a counter-terrorism incident, we work with 12-hour shifts after which you need to GTFO for 12 hours to recharge. That's not because we want to be nice to people or because there isn't enough work or some lack of motivation to work longer shifts.
It's because after 12 hours of crunch you can't think straight, become less observant and start making errors in judgement that potentially kill people.
In fact, the hardest struggle is to get people to clear their stations or hold off from coming in so we can maintain an ongoing rotation of fresh minds.
It's because after 12 hours of crunch you can't think straight, become less observant and start making errors in judgement that potentially kill people.
In fact, the hardest struggle is to get people to clear their stations or hold off from coming in so we can maintain an ongoing rotation of fresh minds.
Overwork has massively diminishing returns, and potentially long term health consequences.
Worked in a job that forced me to take on 100+ hour weeks for three months to complete a project that was superbly understaffed. I finished the project and left that damn job.
Would never, ever agree to putting anyone through that. It's disgusting what it does to you physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Would never, ever agree to putting anyone through that. It's disgusting what it does to you physically, mentally, and emotionally.
We have comments of people who have worked for R* and who verified this issue yet people still defend R*.
All this corporal PR deflective bs talk is disappointing. '' They don't HAVE to, we don't force them to...'' You can do this or we'll look elsewhere would technically cover that but we all know it's the same as forcing them as you leave them with no decent option.
All this corporal PR deflective bs talk is disappointing. '' They don't HAVE to, we don't force them to...'' You can do this or we'll look elsewhere would technically cover that but we all know it's the same as forcing them as you leave them with no decent option.
CD Projekt did same with The Witcher 3, why are you people not crucify them also?
https://www.shacknews.com/article/101733/cd-projekt-red-on-crunch-criticisms-not-for-everyone
https://www.shacknews.com/article/101733/cd-projekt-red-on-crunch-criticisms-not-for-everyone
Forcing your employees to work ridiculous amounts of overtime and being cruel to them is not "love and work."
Awful working conditions, I could never imagine having that kind of schedule. They have all the money in the world, there's no reason that you have to grind the employees down like this. Must be absolutely miserable. Rockstar lost a customer, and any other dev that we learn who treats their employees like animals.