Rockstar employees were working "100 hour weeks" for RDR 2 [UPDATE: Rockstar's response]

[BuckRogers]

Functional software != entertainment software. Your product isn't going to be consumed in a week and then shit out to the bargain bins, waiting to compete with the next flavor of the month.

This is the reality of the $60 AAA business model for video games. Almost every studio is like this. The best part is, if you're not Rockstar huge, you do all this and then close down when you don't hit some absurd goal of copies shipped.

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I'm tired of people just throwing their hands up in the air and saying "well, this is the way it is." It doesn't have to be. Just because the entertainment industry has made money off the backs of exploiting their employees for years doesn't mean that they should get to continue. Yes, I'm aware that functional and entertainment software are different, but the fact is that plenty of companies in software, in both entertainment and elsewhere, manage to get by without pulling this sort of shit.

And for Rockstar this is clearly not the reality of the business model. They're still making huge amounts of money from GTA V years later, so this notion that this is the way it has to be is, IMO, completely wrong. Of any company out there, Rockstar's in one of the better positions to eliminate this. They just don't because it's not as profitable.

 

[ShutterMunster]

Functional software != entertainment software. Your product isn't going to be consumed in a week and then shit out to the bargain bins, waiting to compete with the next flavor of the month.

This is the reality of the $60 AAA business model for video games. Almost every studio is like this. The best part is, if you're not Rockstar huge, you do all this and then close down when you don't hit some absurd goal of copies shipped.

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This scenario, which isn't an issue for Rockstar, does not excuse the work conditions at all. I don't even know why you mentioned it.

Game is built on a mountain of corpses and no one will care once it releases because it will be so good a product that people will assume it was worth it.

Kind of like how people assume rich people are inherently smarter than everyone else.

 

[Optional Objectives]

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[Tophat Jones]

Game is built on a mountain of corpses

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Hyperbole much?

Kind of like how people assume rich people are inherently smarter than everyone else.

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People do? I don't think so. And neither would most who watch the POTUS speak And also, what does that have to do with anything?

 

[Jolkien]

As much as I like games, I'd take them slower if it meant sustainable condition for the video game industry holy crap.

 

[Paz]

It's strange to me that these crunch threads always end up huge with arguments raging back and forth trying to justify or crucify elements along the way, it's actually a pretty simple thing to cover.

1. All crunch is bad.
2. Crunch should be considered a failure in process, every project should embrace the lessons of the past and avoid the scenarios that caused crunch to occur.
3. Crunch can also be necessary and occur even if you firmly believe in the first two points and everyone is doing their best.
4. Do not under any circumstances glorify crunch even if it leads to greatness on any given project.
5. Repeat the process from step 1 on the next project.

Some higher ups like to skip a few steps, and of course the owners and managers who make LITERAL billions of dollars from the products like to glorify an ecosystem in which their employees sacrifice for disproportionately tiny benefits (if any).

It's actually that simple. I've crunched on every project I've ever worked on btw, but never on the same areas that were under my direct control and I had experience with, I'll probably crunch on my next projects too despite firmly believing that a no crunch scenario is actually achievable in the right circumstances.

 

[JDSN]

Yeah, at the end of the day its just a cowboy game I mildly cared about, so its an easy pass for me.

 

[ShutterMunster]

Hyperbole much?

People do? I don't think so. And neither would most who watch the POTUS speak And also, what does that have to do with anything?

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Man, I've seen it first hand. Say something of substance or get out of my mentions. Waste someone else's time.

 

[Paz]

People do? I don't think so. And neither would most who watch the POTUS speak And also, what does that have to do with anything?

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Your argument that people don't view rich people as inherently smarter than others is that an incredibly wealthy idiot was voted in as president of the united states of America, think that through.

(No idea what relevance it has though just caught this part of the comment and thought it was odd).

 

[sandboxgod]

Threads like this make me happy I worked my buns off to escape the Games industry. But I am always afraid I'll get sucked right back into that nightmare becuase I have way more yrs in games then outside of it.

 

[spman2099]

Yes, I realize that. As I said, I do it too, and sure you can definitely see the toll it takes on families. Some people choose to ignore it because the money is good. And people choose to stay in a position because it's hard/scary to change positions. You don't need to quit with no options, a skilled programmer or whatever could find a job easily if they focused on looking. If it was important to them they could get out. No one is trapped in their job unless they want to be. Even if you took a lower paying job, you can make adjustments on your spending to allow you to handle the cut in pay.

Blaming Rockstar because you have to work long hours sometimes won't get anyone anywhere. That's called being an adult. Any job with real responsibilities or deadlines will require it of you. If that's too much to ask for some people then you might have to find a job with less responsibilities. And ya, due to that, it might pay less.

No one said he had to quit immediately, but a 3 month time frame to get the fuck out shouldn't be an issue.

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The amount of empathy on display in your post is truly breathtaking. You really are an amazing humanitarian. Any new heads in your freezer, or have you started taking fingers as trophies?

You better be in the lookout for that 'made in China' marker on all your products.

It's tough to feel morally superior based on what you buy in this world. But I wish you luck.

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Someone made this comic for you...

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[Tophat Jones]

Man, I've seen it first hand. Say something of substance or get out of my mentions. Waste someone else's time.

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Oh I'm sorry. You've seen the pile of corpses where the completed game emerges? Have any pics?

Sorry I wasted your important time on this Internet forum. I know you are very important and have world changing things to do.

 

[ShutterMunster]

Your argument that people don't view rich people as inherently smarter than others is that an incredibly wealthy idiot was voted in as president of the united states of America, think that through.

(No idea what relevance it has though just caught this part of the comment and thought it was odd).

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If you read my original post the analogy was clear as day. He isn't here to converse in good faith. Ignore him.

 

[gutter_trash]

Crunch Time = Bad Management

 

[Einreich]

Did they got pay for their work ?

If yes, what is the problem?

 

[Paz]

Did they got pay for their work ?

If yes, what is the problem?

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Well usually they are salaried employees that don't receive pay per hour worked, but even ignoring that would you be ok if your job told you tomorrow that you need to work 14 hours a day 7 days a week for the next 6 months?

This is such a bad take I don't even know where to begin.

 

[massoluk]

Did they got pay for their work ?

If yes, what is the problem?

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No real choice between "You better fall in line working overtime" or being pressured into looking for a new jobs"

 

[ShutterMunster]

Did they got pay for their work ?

If yes, what is the problem?

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You don't get overtime as a salaried employee...

 

[Einreich]

You don't get overtime as a salaried employee...

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Oh I see. Did'nt get that !

 

[Opto]

Did they got pay for their work ?

If yes, what is the problem?

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Please work multiple 100 hr weeks and get back to us with your answer

 

[sabrina]

Did they got pay for their work ?

If yes, what is the problem?

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Spoken like someone who's never had to consistently work overtime under the threat of job security. It's not called overtime arbitrarily. People should not be working for that long. It's not healthy, and in many cases it's not optional.

 

[Armaros]

Spoken like someone who's never had to consistently work overtime under the threat of job security. It's not called overtime arbitrarily. People should not be working for that long. It's not healthy, and in many cases it's not optional.

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Also to the point, they are probably not getting overtime, because as if Rockstar would pay extra for overtime.

 

[Deleted member 17388]

Did they got pay for their work ?

If yes, what is the problem?

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Money in exchange of physical and mental welfare. I bet they are passionate™
But seriously, most likely they are salary-based so...

 

[Convasse]

I wasn't truly interested in buying the game previously, and now I won't out of principle. But I'm wondering, for those of you who are and find this egregious:
Is this enough for you to boycott the game entirely? Or are a lot of the reactions in this thread the all-too-common " internet outrage" that we go through without any meaningful results.
How many of you, who were going to buy the game previously, will now abstain from patronizing Rockstar for this habitual behavior towards it's employees?

 

[gogosox82]

Awful. Devs need to unionize.

 

[sabrina]

Also to the point, they are probably not getting overtime, because as if Rockstar would pay extra for overtime.

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Correct. 100 hours on consecutive weeks is hitting 44 hours of double time per employee. If R* had been paying that much, they could have taken that money and hire thrice the people they currently do for regular hours.

There's no way in hell they're paying overtime. Which is downright evil considering how much money GTA V keeps making.

 

[Darknight]

Correct. 100 hours on consecutive weeks is hitting 44 hours of double time per employee. If R* had been paying that much, they could have taken that money and hire thrice the people they currently do for regular hours.

There's no way in hell they're paying overtime. Which is downright evil considering how much money GTA V keeps making.

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We need to stop pushing this notion that adding more people solves the problem. It's simply not true.

 

[BlacJack]

The amount of empathy on display in your post is truly breathtaking. You really are an amazing humanitarian. Any new heads in your freezer, or have you started taking fingers as trophies?

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So now I'm a bad person? Interesting argument I suppose. It sucks he is in a tight spot, we've all been there. But everyone dog piling on a company that paid him for it is not how you "fix" problems like this. But ya, keep making solid points by trying to slander my character.

 

[francium87]

I worked a 65 hour per week research job for 2 years and it was the worst years of my life.
Never went home to my parents, often skipped meals, GF dumped me (can't blame her), failing health, probably depression.

100 hours is insane. And to brag about it is even worse.

I was never that interested in Rockstar's games (hate open world games). I will never buy RDR2.

 

[Armaros]

We need to stop pushing this notion that adding more people solves the problem. It's simply not true.

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As opposed to massive lose of efficiency and productivity for people that work 100 hours a week?

 

[sandboxgod]

Also to the point, they are probably not getting overtime, because as if Rockstar would pay extra for overtime.

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Normally devs on AAA titles of this magnitude get huge bonuses. sometimes devs reveal annon (spelling?) on Glassdoor.com how much they take in. I dont feel like checking myself

edit- I"m not making light of this crunch btw I think mandatory overtime is some BS I hated working straight 12s for months on end. And I got no bonus cause the title wasnt a huge blockbuster hit in my case. I'm just saying- at least these guys are getting some bonuses (I think)

 

[Darknight]

Yes, I realize that. As I said, I do it too, and sure you can definitely see the toll it takes on families. Some people choose to ignore it because the money is good. And people choose to stay in a position because it's hard/scary to change positions. You don't need to quit with no options, a skilled programmer or whatever could find a job easily if they focused on looking. If it was important to them they could get out. No one is trapped in their job unless they want to be. Even if you took a lower paying job, you can make adjustments on your spending to allow you to handle the cut in pay.

Blaming Rockstar because you have to work long hours sometimes won't get anyone anywhere. That's called being an adult. Any job with real responsibilities or deadlines will require it of you. If that's too much to ask for some people then you might have to find a job with less responsibilities. And ya, due to that, it might pay less.

No one said he had to quit immediately, but a 3 month time frame to get the fuck out shouldn't be an issue.

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But if they're crunching, they don't have time to be finding another job. If they're crunching, they might not have enough time to notice the toll that it's taking. Often these things build up and get bottled up until it blows up. By the time that happens, it's too late. You can list all these things that they should do to get out or recognize the situation but if they're in the middle of crunch, they just don't have the time to do it. A lot of what you're talking about happens in hindsight.

 

[spman2099]

So now I'm a bad person? Interesting argument I suppose. It sucks he is in a tight spot, we've all been there. But everyone dog piling on a company that paid him for it is not how you "fix" problems like this. But ya, keep making solid points by trying to slander my character.

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To be fair, I think you slandered your own character. You just don't seem to care that other people are being exploited.

 

[ejo]

must make the employees sick to see the sales numbers and know they probably earned pennies on the dollar for their work. to each his/her own. i would never work that hard for someone else's benefit.

 

[Armaros]

Normally devs on AAA titles of this magnitude get huge bonuses. sometimes devs reveal annon (spelling?) on Glassdoor.com how much they take in. I dont feel like checking myself

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No one besides upper management is getting anything worth 100 hours a week worth of work compensation. Because if the bonuses would be beyond the cost of just paying overtime they would just settle for overtime.

 

[sabrina]

We need to stop pushing this notion that adding more people solves the problem. It's simply not true.

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Hmm. Some parts of development are considerably more scalable than others, especially art production at a major studio. Contrariwise, nor does telling someone to spend more time at work help linearly with the problem.

In any case, it's vastly preferable to this grotesque mismanagement of people that's currently going on.

 

[Darknight]

As opposed to massive lose of efficiency and productivity for people that work 100 hours a week?

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I'm not arguing overworking with longer hours makes things better though or doesn't hinder efficiency. I'm arguing that you can't simply make up the time by adding more people. They're two separate things.

 

[Tate]

Well that tears it. I won't buy RDR2. I can't support shit like this. I'm done with rockstar. I hope I never hear about blizzard doing this lol.

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So outta sight outta mind. I wouldn't be surprised if people worked crazy hours at Blizzard or any other major developer.

 

[Andvari]

Over 7 days that's 14 hours per day, which isn't too insane.

How much are their salaries? Do they get overtime during crunch? A nice bonus when the game inevitably gets 99 on MC? Good holidays during normal workload times?

You can't really judge what this means without any of that info.

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Troll post?.

One of the worst posts I've read on this forum, against the current indeed.

Hope to God you never become a manager, You will basically become a murderer.

 

[sabrina]

I'm not arguing overworking with longer hours makes things better though or doesn't hinder efficiency. I'm arguing that you can't simply make up the time by adding more people. They're two separate things.

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Three people working 40 hour work weeks are going to get a shit ton more done than one person working a hundred hours. Probably over twice as much.

The problem is R* isn't paying the employees working 100 hours for all their time. So every single way you look at this, R* is in the wrong.

 

[Darknight]

Hmm. Some parts of development are considerably more scalable than others, especially art production at a major studio. Contrariwise, nor does telling someone to spend more time at work help linearly with the problem.

In any case, it's vastly preferable to this grotesque mismanagement of people that's currently going on.

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Art is scalable to a degree, but scaling too much also leads to problems too. Same with coding. Spreading yourself out to too many people can cause more problems than it solves. Then there's also the way dependencies work and how those bottlenecks also can't be fixed by adding more people.

 

[Deleted member 15326]

We need to stop pushing this notion that adding more people solves the problem. It's simply not true.

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The biggest problem is unrealistic scheduling and early attempts to cut corners biting people in the ass.

Hiring more people initially can help alleviate this somewhat, but if there are underlying management issues and/or problems with what marketing and publishers want versus what devs can reasonably deliver it won't. Even if things go well you get the inevitable mass layoffs when a project is done, and on top of all that you have desired specs not working out well and things, sometimes large things needing to be redone and pushing back schedules.

 

[Gold Arsene]

My work cant even make someone work over a certain amount of hours or else they face genuine legal trouble.

The fuck is different about the video game industry that this shit is allowed?

 

[Armaros]

Art is scalable to a degree, but scaling too much also leads to problems too. Same with coding. Spreading yourself out to too many people can cause more problems than it solves. Then there's also the way dependencies work and how those bottlenecks also can't be fixed by adding more people.

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If their development system is setup that they require people to work 100 hours and cant be scaled out, its a fundamental failure of planning and development.

 

[Papercuts]

If you just try to toss bodies at a project, it just leads to an even bigger mass layoff when the work is done. It's a pretty ugly situation in every direction.

The only "real" solution is to outright delay the game so you don't have to pretty much kill the workforce, stretch it out so that if you broke all the crunch time down into normal work weeks it would fill out the same amount of work (if not moreso because people are sure as hell not working efficiently at all past a certain point). But god forbid the people not working their asses off on the game have to delay their profits.

It's such a bummer to read about stuff like this considering it was always my dream when I was younger to actually work on games. Then you read about something like this or the Telltale fiasco and just get reminded of how screwed up everything is.

 

[sandboxgod]

Hm, looking at Rockstar Games on glassdoor.com their salaries are lower than I expected. In the state of California I do believe they must pay overtime at least to engineers that earn under 100k annual salary (unless the laws has changed since I left CA). I am not sure bout the other positions though- since I only kept up with laws for programming

In other states like Texas you have no rights and the employer can call a deathmarch at will. You just have the right to quit or just refuse to work overtime and wait to see if you get kicked

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

The point is that if they didn't crunch, obviously, the work would be left unfinished/unpolished before the release date.

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Nope, sorry.

Any publisher/producer that bakes crunch into the dev timeline is a fucking moron that does not trust their developers.

Please stop defending crunch as if it is unavoidable once development begins. And please do not insult my intelligence by acting like I'm saying "Rockstar should release an unfinished product". Because you know that I'm not.

Crunch is not something that you "have to do" once it becomes clear that your deadlines are shit.

 

[Abylim]

I could have swore I read somewhere that it was only the higher ups and it was voluntary? Saw an article on Facebook that I can't find now about it.

 

[sandboxgod]

I could have swore I read somewhere that it was only the higher ups and it was voluntary? Saw an article on Facebook that I can't find now about it.

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usually in entertainment industry you get an email outright requesting you to work mandatory overtime (edit: The email is sent usually to the entire dept). And they always position producers neatly infront of all the exits. Plus they request you check with your lead before leaving

It's really bad

 

[Darknight]

If their development system is setup that they require people to work 100 hours and cant be scaled out, its a fundamental failure of planning and development.

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I agree; I'm not saying otherwise. I'm only dispelling the notion that throwing more people at it can offset the time required to get something done. Anyone with software development experience will tell you that you usually can't solve the problem by throwing more people at it to complete it within the scheduled time frame.