So it turns out Rockstar aren't the overblown monsters that they seemed to be. They are just your average monster like most other AAA development studios.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Rockstar grants permission to current devs to talk about company on social media
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
And we suddenly just discredit any accounts that said the contrary or had different experiences?
Nah, it was about Dan Houser talking about how the writing team composed of him and four others would work 100 hour weeks. All it did was revive talks about conditions at Rockstar and unionisation of the video games industry. This is a discussion we should be having really, nothing wrong with it.
https://kotaku.com/we-were-working-100-hour-weeks-red-dead-redemption-2-h-1829758281
Phew, I was worried we would reach page 3 without namedropping Trump and labeling one side of the fence alt-right.
"Anyone that disagrees with my predetermined beliefs loves Trump."
Good fucking lord. You guys are the worst.
I'll repeat. No one's saying "don't fight against people having to do 100 hour weeks". The valid point is in pointing out the hypocrisy in pretending people have to feel bad about playing a game that's a product of that.
That explains a lot. That goes back to the RDR days, right? I remember a lot of spouses of at the time RDR devs that went against Rockstar for terrible working conditions.
Yeah, there's a difference between coding for 14 hours a day, and sitting in an office with your brother and friendly colleagues writing dialogue. It's a completely different type of stress.
And people happy with the company are rarely the ones going out of their way to speak about them. It's a nuance discussion especially with Rockstar having several studios. We don't know if the crunch period are structural to one studio, a couple of them, down to one department or one manager. A detailed account is definitely needed.
Game development by its nature is prone to crunch, the management doesn't really have to much power because what's important here is cash flow and what was spent in marketing, distribution etc for the supposed set launch. Delaying a game is the best solution but depending on the structure of your studio, it might not be possible at all time.
Remember that for exemple here, Rockstar is a subsidiary of Take Two. With GTA or RDR being a huge chunk of the money earned by them, it's entirely possible that they set the date of one of them at a particular date on purpose so that the effect of those sales can be shown at the upcoming quarterly report. Not having them could significantly hurt the whole company which can make Take Tow's board reluctant to agree for a delay.
It's just an extremely complicated subject and just saying "management fucked up" is way to reductive. We don't even know which management you're talking about.
Exactly, they're a company that have some issues that need some serious managing.
These positive accounts doesn't discount others who've gone through negative experiences working with Rockstar.
In the end though, not monsters.
Buying a game is something that can be easily achieved with minimal life disruption.
Using gas, modern electronics and what not that are products of cheap labour and harms the environment is not.
Wait who said people "have" to feel bad?
Because the poster wasn't saying that. Is someone else saying that? I haven't seen anyone say that.
We've heard stuff about their last game GTA V and current GTA Online support.
To their credit, nobody said anything about RDR2 besides that House guy, but it's incredibly naive to think they solved everything in like 2 years
I am talking about frame of mind. Its incredibly naive to believe that anyone given permission to talk about their company would say that yeah they want to kill themselves because of the 200 hours a week workday, etc
Its absurd that a permission is required at all to talk about basic fucking human welfare that RX are clearly flouting.
Yeah I think you need to go back and reread the sequence of posts.
Hahahaha, oh man.
"Permission to talk about work conditions."
That alone says enough about your work conditions.
Unionize, everyone.
"Permission to talk about work conditions."
That alone says enough about your work conditions.
Unionize, everyone.
He clarified that's not what he meant, but to me, "Some people here really don't want to feel any kind of bad in regards to their RDR2 purchase." reads exactly like that. It still implies that we should somehow feel bad about purchasing a game.
Nobody is arguing that, though. So you're defending a poster from nonexistent arguments using one of the most fallacious arguments possible.
There is no value in stating that because we permit worse things to happen in the world we must give up any feelings of displeasure towards any lesser bad actors.
It is a trite and worthless sentiment that isn't worth the paltry kilobyte of data it occupies.
But... no one is actually saying that.
You're arguing against a point that no one is trying to make.
I'm not in the US, I'm U.K.
There are channels in which I can discuss my working conditions should that be an issue, but I personally don't think that a public place or social media is the best place to address it. I don't think I'm alone in thinking that.
More like Rockstar grants permission to current devs to talk positively about company on social media.
The fact they need permission is a huge red flag alone.
The fact they need permission is a huge red flag alone.
This pretty much, a slight faux paus in his wording and the world erupts into a fury of wrath and pre-order cancels.
He cleared it up the next day or thereabouts eh? Not sure how this got so out of hand at all, people a keen to get on the attack it feels like.
Pretty much.
People like to give shit to EA, Ubisoft and almost every single AAA game companies under the sun, but atleast they never prevent the developers from talking about their work conditions.
If not, what exactly does "Some people here really don't want to feel any kind of bad in regards to their RDR2 purchase." at first glance mean, then?
And this isn't just about "lesser bad actors". This is comparison between people earning a potentially six figure salary in an industry with a superfluous amount of choice vs children stitching T-shirts by way of literal slave labor. If feeling bad about buying the game, but not feeling bad about buying a cheap T-shirt isn't hypocritical to you, then I don't know what to tell you.
Precisely! As if anyone would let employees post negative shit about working conditions.They were all given a template that they could work with.
What? I'm quoting a literal post dude. It's the comment the supposed "whataboutism" guy was responding to.
I have no idea why people keep saying this....this is not uncommon.
Pretty much every company I have ever worked for has had a ban on talking about them on social media. They have all been very nice to work for as well.
So if you are worked to death to make your owners rich it should be kept under wraps as a standard?
Yeah I can imagine that this sucks. People talking shit about a company you feel like cared for you. I'm not sure who is speaking the truth (or truths) here, but it sure isn't as simple as ROCKSTAR BAD or ROCKSTAR GOOD.
If current employees had issues with the working conditions at their workplace they wouldn't say it on social media, permission or not. So this doesn't mean much really as we already knew that it wasn't a case of all staff working 100 hours for weeks and weeks. It was more a case of poor work culture due to the working of said amount of hours seen as "passion".
Standard practices in corporate capitalism are almost always inherently bad and something people should fight against if they want their rights and livelihood to be protected. But, yes.
I have no idea why people think saying something is common is an argument for it.
Very much so, I wonder if anyone can fill us in on what happened to Agent finally now..that would be a cool twist in this.
And that's a problem, it shouldn't be prone to crunch. Developers shouldn't be expected to sacrifice their personal lives and work extreme amounts of overtime to ship a product.
You could at least put some effort into your shitposting.
That might be the case. If it's all peachy, every Rockstar employee with a twitter account would say so on twitter. So far, we've only seen a handful of people saying anything positive here while many has said negative things (see the video I posted). Personally, I think it's very based on seniority, family obligations, what contract you're on, etc.
Edit: Even if no one has been forced to do 100 hours weeks, some seem to still do very long weeks because they want to. A healthy company culture would discourage this too, as it's way to easy to not recognize the signs of being burnt out and once you hit the wall, it's over. It could take years to recover, if you ever do. I've seen it with friends. Breakdown during a public speech, then half a year of recovery.
Another broke down and could never enter the building of the company ever again, he had to work permanently from home.
TL;DR: Even non-enforced long work weeks have consequences and companies should discourage people from doing it as it.
Last edited:
But none of them are currently working at Rockstar, right? I know it's difficult to talk about terrible working conditions while you are still working there, but maybe things have improved? Also, maybe Jason Schreiner's article will have more insight on today's working conditions.
It's not prone to crunch because of the culture, it's prone to crunch because of the market and the work being done.
More interested in hearing testimonials from everyone, including whoever goes with anonymity with Kotaku.
As for the permission line, totally blown out of proportion. Most companies are wary of social media these days because 90% of the userbase are fucking idiots or seriously deranged. The amount of absolute nonsense, attacks, pile-ons, abuse, doxxing, targetted hate and drama that comes from social media almost makes it worth having complete blackouts. Although I accept in 2018 social media is life for many so most companies do need to accept some sort of employee use of it.
Even this forum cannot use social media appropriately at times flying off the rails and attacking people/trying to play internet detectives.
As for the permission line, totally blown out of proportion. Most companies are wary of social media these days because 90% of the userbase are fucking idiots or seriously deranged. The amount of absolute nonsense, attacks, pile-ons, abuse, doxxing, targetted hate and drama that comes from social media almost makes it worth having complete blackouts. Although I accept in 2018 social media is life for many so most companies do need to accept some sort of employee use of it.
Even this forum cannot use social media appropriately at times flying off the rails and attacking people/trying to play internet detectives.