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Eurogamer: The human cost of Red Dead Redemption 2
- Thread starter antonz
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If crunch has always been a thing, why haven't unions already started up?
I don't know jack, are they difficult to setup or do you have wait years to get through bureaucratic stuff or is it just a case of it being harder to get the ball rolling if you didn't immediately set one up in the industrys infancy and sociologically it comes down to raising awareness aka whats happening now?
I don't know jack, are they difficult to setup or do you have wait years to get through bureaucratic stuff or is it just a case of it being harder to get the ball rolling if you didn't immediately set one up in the industrys infancy and sociologically it comes down to raising awareness aka whats happening now?
Jeez, you must be a person of patience. I feel glad for you, honest. Here's wishing the new position brings you success and happiness.
Those that try to start it openly get ousted pretty fast by the management.
I guess one have get enough people on board in secret to reach a critical mass where they can't just fire everyone.
This is scandalous and something needs to be done.
I'm not buying the game, but it isn't posturing, it just doesn't interest me. The game will still sell bucketloads. So, the press and community will need to keep the pressure on Rockstar: it is not acceptable.
The GTA4 quote has me seething.
I'm not buying the game, but it isn't posturing, it just doesn't interest me. The game will still sell bucketloads. So, the press and community will need to keep the pressure on Rockstar: it is not acceptable.
The GTA4 quote has me seething.
UK employment lawyer here. In the UK, for unions to have any effect they need to be recognized by the employer in question, either voluntarily or statutorily. If an employer does not choose to recognize a union, then the statutory process is long and difficult, with certain tests to be met (e.g. the union represents a majority of workers).
Anti union rhetoric and union busting before it germinates are both subliminally and not so subliminally done at video game companies to the point where coworkers will turn on you when they are supposed to be on your side.
For instance, if someone brings up what they view as problematic work practices at a company general assembly, their leads (bosses but tending to be lower tier management just as taken advantage of in a lot of ways) will make fun of them in management chat, with upper management saying "Dont worry, we will take care of them" instead of listening to their concerns.
This gets to the point where other people at the same level as the person raising a point are conditioned to roll their eyes and disassociate. Companies and co-workers can view those that don't tow the company line as ineligible for promotion, and I've seen some of the vocal people have their hours cut or be put on call.
Is it the exact same at Rockstar? Not sure, but I wouldn't be shocked if a lot of similar practices happen there.
this example is the perfect example of middle management gone bad. When the boss of your boss is doing crazy hours, and your boss is taking him as a role model, that's where everything can go wrong if the only thing he wants is to get closer to his boss (and possibly get a higher position in the company). This type of middle manager is the worst, they don't give a shit about you or your life, they just care about them and how they can look good enough to have their boss attention. Most of the time, they try to prove that they can make their team go even further than what is needed, further than their team can handle or even make complete mistakes just to show they work hard (quality doesn't matter, only quantity).
The truth that I learned to be a good manager : when someone is doing long and very frequent overtimes can be only for 2 reasons
1. you are bad at your job and you should leave
2. your manager/the management is bad at his job of planning things and should leave
Just saying "we don't ask people to stay longuer" isn't an excuse when you have a higher position than the ones who work for you. You need to tell clearly to your subordinates "it's late, go home" and you need to know when to say that, even if that's against your own target as a manager. If you don't know how/don't want to do it, if you are not able to come back to your top management and say "the team is exhausted, we need a break to come back stronger, we currently have no gain in pushing so far", then you are a bad middle manager and you simple don't (or don't want to) understand the importance of your position.
If this is the rule in R* (or any other studio), then the only way to make it change is not to write papers or long posts like this one. The only solution is to unionise...
That GTA4 story is rage inducing. Something needs to be done. They are burning through people's lives and mental health.
Either they need to unionize or they need to entirely change their culture of abusing their workers.
Also, good on Eurogamer and Tom Phillips for following through with this reporting.
Either they need to unionize or they need to entirely change their culture of abusing their workers.
Also, good on Eurogamer and Tom Phillips for following through with this reporting.
Jesus Christ on a cracker at that GTA4 story. I am not well versed in unions but are those employees working for R* not part of one? Furthermore, are there no laws governing in designed to protect employees against this kind of perennial overtime related abuse?
I feel like a hypocrite having purchased this game knowing the gross conditions it was developed in.
I don't want my copy anymore. Putting up for sale on era marketplace thread.
Thanks
I don't want my copy anymore. Putting up for sale on era marketplace thread.
Thanks
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I briefly worked in QA (not at Rockstar, but in the UK) and I heard that exact quote several times. Well, actually, I think it was Aldi, not Tesco.
Not aimed at me, but aimed at guys who were at the company for 5-10 years, on temporary contracts (they'd keep you on for 11 months and a bit, lay you off and then bring you back again), who were promised that next year, it'd be something permanent. (It never was.)
Seeing that quote was a trip down memory lane. (For the record, I loved the job - it just wasn't sustainable given how low the pay was.)
Unfortunately this is common across most industries. Take retail as a prime example (my day job) - expected to maximise sales with minimum staff and hours. Over the last 3 year's I've had 2 weeks of official holiday taken 2-3 days at a time. My longest "holiday" was when in was hospitalised for a week and head office "encouraged" me to post those days as holiday. On top of that I work 6 days a week 8am - 8pm, and if I'm lucky I can go home early one or two nights a week to be able to put my 2 year old son to bed myself.
So this isn't just a problem in gaming- it's a problem in more or less every industry. That doesn't make it right by any means and I'll be fucked if anyone suggests it has to be that way for you to be successful. The problem is the cunts at the top who work their cushy 9-5 and expect the lowly middle managers and their overworked teams to pull long days and maximise profits with minimum staff and minimum pay.
Reminds me, I was budgeted 90,000€ for wages last year. I only used 60,000€ as my boss above me put a limit on how many hours I can use per week. He gets a percentage of the savings and now this year I'm expected to beat last year's sales using 60,000€ or less. If somebody else's pocket can be lined at the expense of "disposable and replaceable" employees, you can bet your dick the people at the bottom will get shafted each and every time. Same with gaming, same with McDonald's, same with Wal-Mart.
It's wrong and it has to stop, but if money is being made, it won't. And once the money stops being made, people lose jobs.
So this isn't just a problem in gaming- it's a problem in more or less every industry. That doesn't make it right by any means and I'll be fucked if anyone suggests it has to be that way for you to be successful. The problem is the cunts at the top who work their cushy 9-5 and expect the lowly middle managers and their overworked teams to pull long days and maximise profits with minimum staff and minimum pay.
Reminds me, I was budgeted 90,000€ for wages last year. I only used 60,000€ as my boss above me put a limit on how many hours I can use per week. He gets a percentage of the savings and now this year I'm expected to beat last year's sales using 60,000€ or less. If somebody else's pocket can be lined at the expense of "disposable and replaceable" employees, you can bet your dick the people at the bottom will get shafted each and every time. Same with gaming, same with McDonald's, same with Wal-Mart.
It's wrong and it has to stop, but if money is being made, it won't. And once the money stops being made, people lose jobs.
I understand the sentiment but I would post this in the Buy/Sell/Trade thread here: https://www.resetera.com/threads/buy-sell-trade-thread-2018-read-the-new-rules-in-the-op.454/
I'm glad the last time I gave Rockstar money was with GTA3 - a game which, thankfully, made me lose all interest in anything the company puts out.
Still, this isn't gonna stop them making money. Critical acclaim for RDR2 is through the roof, and a few dozens people boycotting the game isn't gonna make the slightest difference.
Still, this isn't gonna stop them making money. Critical acclaim for RDR2 is through the roof, and a few dozens people boycotting the game isn't gonna make the slightest difference.
Thanks, I've done some training days and it's so different having a calm space to work in. It's been great.
This shit is really unforgivable. Rockstar is immensely successful with their games but this has been an ongoing issue for years and years. Like seriously it'll take someone dying from exhaustion to fix this crap. Regulation needs to step in already.
It's pretty damning reading this stuff about the working conditions. Has there ever been an expose into working conditions at a developer for a game of this magnitude before ?
Shameful. Those shrinking horse bollocks sure were worth the time investment.
It's a real shame that a company like Rockstar is treating their employees like this. Their games are some of the largest in the industry and they should be setting a precedent. People will be eager to get Rockstar on their resume and it sounds like that is being taken advantage of.
I don't agree with crunch at the best of times, but crunch lasting for months/years/indefinitely can no longer be called crunch.
I don't agree with crunch at the best of times, but crunch lasting for months/years/indefinitely can no longer be called crunch.
Yeah, while I've never experienced crunch to anything like the extent described here, I did have *some* pretty lengthy stints of late nights and weekends while in the games industry, and one thing I'm confident that I can say about the people who were doing it with me: for many of us, there wasn't a mentality that we were doing it for the company; we were doing it for the audience; we wanted our games to be played; if I didn't want that feeling in the first place, I wouldn't have got into the games industry!
I guess that's a curious catch-22 about the games industry - because it's so easy to put it on a pedestal when you're young, it does have a level of job satisfaction when things go right that I've not really experienced since then, simply because it is an entertainment industry, and you're going in with, as one component, the desire to, well, entertain.
That only goes so far, as I mentioned; I think it's a reason why it tends to get in a lot of people fresh out of uni, and why they're more willing than many to put their work/life balance on the line; you don't want to be The Guy Who Lets The Audience Down. And that's very much not healthy, but I'm really not sure quite where to drive a wedge in it.
Crunch long before RDR2 launch, crunch goes away only while RDR2 online is about to release, then stays crunch to make content, then keeps crunching for PC release getting done, then crunch some more to get all the RDR2 online stuff to work on PC
lol they made multiple billions in GTA5 that's more than enough money to have changed the RDR2 dev crunch problems so why would RDR2 making more billions do anything to fix it for the next game
Cheers to Eurogamer for still pressing this. It absolutely needs to be addressed. I hope other outlets call them out on it.
Christ, R*. Get it together.
Honestly at this rate you can release RDR online next year and i don't think many would have a problem with that. Give your employees some inch of decency. The money and gamers will still be there
Christ, R*. Get it together.
Honestly at this rate you can release RDR online next year and i don't think many would have a problem with that. Give your employees some inch of decency. The money and gamers will still be there
Money is also made in Denmark, Norway or Sweden and they don't have these kind of issues. And workers in North Korea are also treated poorly.
It's about social security. If people can afford to quit their jobs employers need to improve the working conditions to have enough staff.
I don't work in gaming but the job I work at went from a job with crunch + weekend work to one that hasn't needed that in years.
The solution was better project management + empathetic managers.
This part also makes it clear how Rockstar's statement about employees 'not being forced' to work overtime was complete bullshit:
in reality something has to suffer to change things and the some publishers have it set up so they can't take the fall
In the case of my country, Norway, this type of overtime is outright illegal for the employer and employee.
It's illegal for the employee so the employer can't use the "it was voluntary" argument.
We don't have much gaming industry to speak of though, Funcom and Red Thread Games are the biggest ones, but they have managed to deliver a number of good games.
It's a high profile example, concerning the biggest game in years, about an infamous studio that has repeatedly tried to run damage control.
Was already going to wait for PC version, because we know they didn't announce it purely to get double/triple dip $ just like they did with GTAV.
But now? Ugh. I don't think they really have an excuse to be honest. They're sitting on Midas levels of fortunes from their successes, and they haven't improved. I guess the saddest thing about it is that it's so fixable. If you need more work on something, hire more people. Don't burn people out and abuse them. Of course bean counting and stretching for every possible profit is basically all that is on the minds of the higher-ups, compassion and ethics be damned.
I also know from experience that for salaried employees it can be particularly galling. You earn x $/check for your normal job, and often employers will 'suggest' you work a lot more than normal because 'everyone' is expected to 'contribute', all for no extra compensation, or way to say no that doesn't put your career at risk. Not only might they fire you or lay you off for a BS reason, but then make it impossible to be rehired for a new job in the same field.
But now? Ugh. I don't think they really have an excuse to be honest. They're sitting on Midas levels of fortunes from their successes, and they haven't improved. I guess the saddest thing about it is that it's so fixable. If you need more work on something, hire more people. Don't burn people out and abuse them. Of course bean counting and stretching for every possible profit is basically all that is on the minds of the higher-ups, compassion and ethics be damned.
I also know from experience that for salaried employees it can be particularly galling. You earn x $/check for your normal job, and often employers will 'suggest' you work a lot more than normal because 'everyone' is expected to 'contribute', all for no extra compensation, or way to say no that doesn't put your career at risk. Not only might they fire you or lay you off for a BS reason, but then make it impossible to be rehired for a new job in the same field.
Going from the quotes in the OP, it sounds to me like the situation is so bad they might as well publicly lash their workers, put up a guillotine in the company lunch room, and occasionally threaten to hold the employees' kids and family hostage to drive some extra incentive out of them, because they're really not far off from that.
But hey, I guess treating your workers like absolute shit with no rights is ok as everyone else does it, and we get to play our games we want to play so much?
This is special because after launch they still had to crunch for GTAOnline frequent milestones, and they fear the same might happen to RDR2.
because the public rarely gets to see how the sausage is made.
its a case of out of sight out of mind and the industry is so secretive that you rarely hear about it.
The article points out this is not just "crunchtime", but turning into a regular cadence of work:
"It's not a naturally sustainable thing to do, to put in that amount of hours, to work this much, with no end in sight," one person said. "And the fear is those at the top have seen how profitable this is working at 150, 200 per cent and wonder why we should ever slow down. Now months have turned into over a year and we're staring down the barrel of this not actually ending because there will always be more things coming out."
This reminds me of the Louis CK joke about being able to accomplish great things by using human suffering as currency. Not to say Rockstar is Foxconn, but nonetheless their accomplishments are less impressive when you're made aware that it's using people's passion to drain them like batteries, and not even credit them if they burnout before the end of production. I had thought that Rockstar's reluctance at showing their process was about keeping the magic, like Dan Houser says, but I have to think it has something to do with seeing how the sausage is made making the sausage less praiseworthy. Maybe Dan doesn't realize that when his employees are working 80+ hours a week it isn't for tens of millions of dollars in personal earnings, and the prestige of being the face of the biggest entertainment products of all time, but just to keep their jobs.
I hope this unflattering attention pushes Rockstar to make major changes to their process.
I hope this unflattering attention pushes Rockstar to make major changes to their process.
im done with rockstar, they have amazing games but they destroy and slaves his workers, how the fuck they force his workers for that 16 extra hours, im sure in Chile that will be illegal, max 45 hours.
This has nothing to do with GAAS and everything to do with rockstar being ran by trashy people.
Other companies heavily used GAAS and yet only rockstar has this horrible level of project mismanagement and treating their employees as trash.
i dont think this is unique to rockstar or GAAS games though.
fucking hell
these kinds of bosses should be named and shamed and never allowed to work in the industry again
with all this talk about crunch lately i've been wondering how it's affected by the shift to GaaS where even after launch you'll always have new content to push out the door
seems hellish
seems hellish
I'm not sure Rockstar is the only company like that, wouldn't be surprised if Naughty Dog is that way as well.
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