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Rockstar employees were working "100 hour weeks" for RDR 2 [UPDATE: Rockstar's response]
- Thread starter Odesu
- Start date
Unless they literally get enough money to never have to work for the rest of their lives, that is absolutely horrible conditions.
Put this into perspective, with the assumption of a 30 minute commute. You leave at 8:30 AM, get there at 9:00 AM, leave at 11:00 PM, get home at 11:30 PM. Which means you have 9 hours at home where you have to eat,sleep,unwind, do whatever before you have to be out the door again.
Repeat for EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. That sounds like hell on earth.
I agree, you don't, but if the pay is right, you get a nicer life the other side.
Emphasis on IF.
Just because you have hundreds of employees and all the time in the world doesn't mean shit gets made quicker or on time. All the developers crunch, Even companies who seldom make games coughvalvecough will crunch.
I don't think that's counting Sundays. It's 100 hour 6-day weeks meaning closer to 17 hour days. You do that for one week but anything longer than two straight weeks of that and it'll take a toll and fast.
Unionize, for fuck's sakes!
You're making a mistake.
You're assuming that the worker bees even go home after work in the first place, rather than sleeping at their desk.
There are parallels between Tesla and Rockstar games insomuch that there is prestige attached to working for the company. People want to be part of something special. They have passion. Yet everyone's terrified of being labelled as a dissenter within the ranks for something as benign as a joke over drinks. You have constant crunch, high levels of stress, extremely high employee turnover with a lot of backstabbing and politics, but there's always fresh meat for the grinder. That's how these companies persist. Really the only thing that will stop them is the government stepping in and saying, "No, you can't treat your employees this way."
Yeah. Of course we usually don't get reports from Japan about this but the situation is maybe even worse there.
I'm about to turn 28.
Crunching with good overtime got me out of a shitty rented house and I had a huge deposit for the house I currently own. It set me forward at least 5 years.
Literally 100 hour weeks? As in 6am to 8pm 7 days a week without any lunch break?
I hope they provided free food delivered to their desks, a commode, on-site accommodation, and a fully paid divorce lawyer.
I hope they provided free food delivered to their desks, a commode, on-site accommodation, and a fully paid divorce lawyer.
Literally a work-sleep-work-sleep schedule.
If you want to live a relaxed life with a family and a social life, don't work for a AAA game developer with a world wide following and insanely hyped games.
If you want to live a relaxed life with a family and a social life, don't work for a AAA game developer with a world wide following and insanely hyped games.
Someday you will finish school and will have to get a job. You will change your mind.
Assuming you have no life outside of work, no friends, no family sure then it's ok if you want to. But if you like me
have 2 kids, wife, trying to stay mentally sane and a house to take care of and I'm sure ton of people at Rockstar Studios is in that exact situation then no - this is not acceptable in any way.
Try reading my other posts?
I've lived crunch. For me it worked out.
I'm not saying all crunch is fine. I'm not saying it's good for everyone. I'm saying it doesn't have to be as shit as it sounds with just "100 hour weeks" thrown around with no other context.
Its funny how warped i have become from working in the oil sands. 12 hours 7 days is a typical work week. I know myself and alot of other people wouldn't go up north to work if the shifts were less. But im guessing the big difference is we are paid ot. So must people want even more hours than that.
Are they having all employees work 100 hour weeks or are they doing round the clock shift work? Two 8 hour shifts 6 times a week seems like it would more effective.
Don't be silly.
Of course they won't. They posting from their smart phones and wearing their jeans which were made from people who have proper slave labour and use Amazon prime.At least the Rockstar folk will be making decent amount of money. The people who make smartphones or jeans don't have that Luxury.
If you gonna have a go at one company then be consistent across the board. Rockstar are not the only company who treat their employees like shit. Every big company does, so there's no point just criticising one. Criticise them all.
Working extra long days every now and again is different for doing it "for weeks" at "several points of the year". That is at a point where you aren't seeing your kids at all (or perhaps one day a week if you're lucky) for weeks on end.
Like a prison sentence. What amount of money would "compensate" for not seeing your kids grow up? You'd be talking millions a year so that you could retire before your kids are grown up.
By living in the office: you get 7 hours sleep per night, 2 hours a day for meals and toilet breaks and about 43 minutes of "me time" left to call the wife and kids. Easy peasy.
This is videogames, son. Not some expendable job like medical care.
Both this and the idea some people have that overworking is a necessary evil and something to be proud of must be eradicated from our society. You don't need any of this stuff to live but people who work on it are actually losing their health and making their lives miserable over this. This should stop, in the video games industry and in any other industry.
I agree it's down to personal circumstances and what you're willing to sacrifice for the paycheck.
But we don't know the people at the company, how they are compensated, or how it might help/hinder their lives.
People are too quick to judge without knowing the facts.
As someone who just finished working 19 straight days in a row without a break including some (about 50 hours) overtime I just don't see how this is supposed to be productive. I could clearly tell that my mind was just not clear enough to really work well during that time. I mean my body was present but that was about all because every decision was slower and it became difficult to just send out a one paragraph email because my mind was tired.
Humans are not meant to work like this and developers really need to re-evaluate whether crunch is even in their best interests because I can't imagine that their workforce is operating at peak efficiency working 100 hour work weeks. Also, if Rockstar really have 10 studios working on a single game and they still need to crunch like this better management is what they really should be looking at not more working hours for employees. None of this makes any sense at all.
Humans are not meant to work like this and developers really need to re-evaluate whether crunch is even in their best interests because I can't imagine that their workforce is operating at peak efficiency working 100 hour work weeks. Also, if Rockstar really have 10 studios working on a single game and they still need to crunch like this better management is what they really should be looking at not more working hours for employees. None of this makes any sense at all.
14 hours behind a computer even one day is very unhealthy and you should be ashamed for this post
Also the article isn't clear if Dan is referring to himself and his brother because it mentions stuff like rewriting which him and his brother are in charge of.
Jesus thats brutal.
After GTA Vs success you think they wont need to do such a shitty thing.
After GTA Vs success you think they wont need to do such a shitty thing.
Uhm it totally is.
Most people I know that worked at Rockstar here in Scotland, absolutely hate the place and left genuinely scarred. You go there for the CV basically.
I don't particularly like their games, so not buying as protest is easy for me, but I'm sure it will sell more than any other game after GTAV.
I don't particularly like their games, so not buying as protest is easy for me, but I'm sure it will sell more than any other game after GTAV.
How do you think games are made? It's a crunch based industry. Not saying it's cool, but games are huge and deadlines are fixed. And you can't fix problems by adding more people, at one point the team becomes too large (they are huge as it is) and it creates more problems than it solves. So the solution is: release the game a lot later (miss target dates, sell way less) or crunch and, with luck, make a hit.
So, we could all wait a year, or they could crunch. And before you all say "we would wait" - no, you wouldn't. People expect everything now and everything huge. We want 100-hour games that are becoming insanely detailed, yet we don't want to pay more than we're used to and we don't want to wait. It's a very hard and very competitive industry.
He's boasting how they did an insane amount of content, not how they exploited their employees. No one wants to crunch, but it's the main way that will make the game amazing. It's time. You need time - work hours. These people will crunch for a few months, feel bad - but when RDR2 sells a gazillion copies and they have that game in their CV - it's really good for their career. Everyone wants to work on a hit game - well, this is the price.
The problem here is - if the upper management isn't crunching with the troops and sharing the pain. If that is the case - then it's wrong. And I have no idea how it is in Rockstar.
So, we could all wait a year, or they could crunch. And before you all say "we would wait" - no, you wouldn't. People expect everything now and everything huge. We want 100-hour games that are becoming insanely detailed, yet we don't want to pay more than we're used to and we don't want to wait. It's a very hard and very competitive industry.
He's boasting how they did an insane amount of content, not how they exploited their employees. No one wants to crunch, but it's the main way that will make the game amazing. It's time. You need time - work hours. These people will crunch for a few months, feel bad - but when RDR2 sells a gazillion copies and they have that game in their CV - it's really good for their career. Everyone wants to work on a hit game - well, this is the price.
The problem here is - if the upper management isn't crunching with the troops and sharing the pain. If that is the case - then it's wrong. And I have no idea how it is in Rockstar.
From my experience with Rockstar, senior-senior staff won't be working those 100 hour weeks, especially not Dan Hauser, who, unless he took over Leslie Benzies job, is just steering the general story and feel of the games, and will say "Yes / No" to whatever the studios are producing.
Studio senior staff will most likely also work 100 hour weeks. Not sure how many studios are actually working on RDR2. Probably 2 or 3? Depends if they have a GTA Online like component.
Studio senior staff might even put more hours in, just from the sheer terror of expecting a call from senior-senior staff asking for "the new build".
Rockstar Games isn't a good place to work. It's a grinder.
Studio senior staff will most likely also work 100 hour weeks. Not sure how many studios are actually working on RDR2. Probably 2 or 3? Depends if they have a GTA Online like component.
Studio senior staff might even put more hours in, just from the sheer terror of expecting a call from senior-senior staff asking for "the new build".
Rockstar Games isn't a good place to work. It's a grinder.
