Real reason why i stayed away form the video game software engineering world. I got an offer from blizzard in irvine for infrastructure in hopes of making it into some game dev... but the horror stories like these are just a huge turn off.

Rockstar = crappy management. Shove your 100hr week up your arse.

I jerk meat 100 hours a week.

At the butcher shop.

Jesus, Im sorry but that is nothing to boast about. People have lives and family. Working 100 hours a week is pure cancer. I cannot imagine working that many hours and I refuse to be a slave to a company regardless of what company it is.

To be honest, back in 2012 my career choice was to go into videogame development as a graphic designer. But I dropped the career in 2014 after I learned more about the industry and the work hours, lifestyle, crunch time, etc. It was something I did not want to be a part of and Im glad I dropped it.

If I were to ever decide to go into videogames again, the I rather make a small indie team and create what we want with pur passion and our schedule that would make us have a happy balanced lifestyle.

Agreed, thats not right. I've heard similar stories regarding Rockstar and GTA games in the past.

I suppose you pay the price if you're going to be a dev in Rockstar's league. That kind of dedication isn't for everyone.

Just work less then??

It is called free will,.. and I am pretty sure Rockstar employees are doing pretty well financially.

Pure madness, this certainly isn't something to be proud of.

A relative of mine worked at R* in the UK the pay isnt great and heavily depends on the bonus you get from sales...

Until that time, be prepared to get whipped.

There's nothing wrong with that if the developers do it willingly and getting paid for it.
Personally i would love to find a 60-70 hour week job when i move to Canada.

Sorry to hear this nonsense. As a consumer all I can help is with my wallet. Just release the damn game and I'll buy 2 copies one PS4 pro and Xbox one X version. Thanks for the masterpiece!!!!

wtf!? Are they really proud of it? That's sick!

I get a lot of the criticism, but we also don't know how much of an exaggeration this is. Certain types of people tend to brag about how hard they (or their company) work, and while it's often true, it's usually not 100% true.

Well i've heard that the culture at Rockstar is great and they they have profit sharing on game's so im sure these 100 hr work weeks will be worth it for them!

I can sympathize with them myself, since i work 12-14 hours a day on a merchant ship 6 months a year.The difference is, they are likely not compensated enough for that kind of work.

A ~7 year dev cycle would have turned into a 15+ year dev cycle if strict regulations were in placed.

Im guessing the company is working 100 work weeks rotating between employees. Like, Walmart is open 24 hours a day but noone is working 168 hours a week.

Rockstar exploits the shit out of its workers - nice

Read the actual vulture.com article this guy butchers with his narrative. It’s a really good article.

These comments... no one is forcing these employees to work there! These artists who DO have family have obviously made the decision where they want to spend their time.

Are you advocating they make 50hr work week rules? You know publishers would still have the same timeframes for deadlines right? Imagine your games coming out with the same release dates and regularity with only 70% of the time and effort put into them.

The only way to solve this would be for a company to be created that would offer insane benefits and weekly hour caps. They would snatch up all of the talent and put out games every 10-15 years.

I barley work 40 hour weeks and that's more than enough for me.

And that is why I am not a game dev ... that and the fact that I know zilch about coding ... and I am very lazy ... oh and I have no experience either ...

For those of us who can't wait for RDR2, thank you.

This update is from the destructoid version of this article noting that not everyone worked 100 hour weeks. This however does not take away from how toxic crunch time can be for developers but if people are passionate enough about their work they'll do as much as they can cause it's what drives them.

Update: Kotaku has received this quote recently, attributable to Dan Houser: "There seems to be some confusion arising from my interview with Harold Goldberg. The point I was trying to make in the article was related to how the narrative and dialogue in the game was crafted, which was mostly what we talked about, not about the different processes of the wider team. After working on the game for seven years, the senior writing team, which consists of four people, Mike Unsworth, Rupert Humphries, Lazlow and myself, had, as we always do, three weeks of intense work when we wrapped everything up. Three weeks, not years. We have all worked together for at least 12 years now, and feel we need this to get everything finished. After so many years of getting things organized and ready on this project, we needed this to check and finalize everything".

"More importantly, we obviously don’t expect anyone else to work this way. Across the whole company, we have some senior people who work very hard purely because they’re passionate about a project, or their particular work, and we believe that passion shows in the games we release. But that additional effort is a choice, and we don’t ask or expect anyone to work anything like this. Lots of other senior people work in an entirely different way and are just as productive – I’m just not one of them! No one, senior or junior, is ever forced to work hard. I believe we go to great lengths to run a business that cares about its people, and to make the company a great place for them to work".]

For someone who made money their is no harm in bringing more help

Why is rockstar doing this? They are one the best in the industry, and they treat their employes like konami does.

Houser has clarified that it was his writing team of 4 people doing these hours, not the whole team.

It's personal choice to work that long, no one's going to be made to do that or unions would rain hell down on Rockstar for breaking all kinds of laws. Imagine the law suits if they were threatened to be sacked or made redundant.

Thing is, you work that long on a video game, you'd never want to play it. So who's the sucker? The employees who probably signed up to ruin their social life creating something they probably hate the sight off by now. And for what? The amount of money Rockstar earns in comparison to their pay checks is most likely peanuts. Well done give yourselves a pat on the back for sweet naff all. I thanks for creating a game I'll enjoy and you won't.

You need more than 4 full days to complete 100 hours, wow the slary must be more than 10000$ a month to make it semi-worth.

I was going to reply with a, "So what? Who hasnt worked a job that required 100hr weeks on occasion?" Then I read all the replies and realize im happy to not work with most of you people.

The headline is misleading. It's talk about the senior writing team working 100 hours for the last 3 weeks to wrap up.

I won't be getting this game so they basically did this for nothing

I would say it's wrong but let's face it, I'm not cancelling my pre-order, so I'd be a total hylocrite to criticise.

That's sad. Unless the employees want to work that - or get a nice hefty chunk of time paid off. I know people who work minimum wage, however, and work about the same amount of hours.

Working over, like that, should be illegal, though.. Some of these other countries with 32 hour, or less, work weeks are doing it right, I think. We work too much in the U.S.. no wonder everyone is so pissy.

I have/had a friend that worked for capcom and other companies in japan, and would regularly work hours like this. He developed huge mental health issues and depression. No company should be bragging about this. It kills people to work hours like this.

“His brother Sam told the site earlier this year: "We've poured everything we have into [Red Dead Redemption 2]. We have really pushed ourselves as hard as we can. The result is a game that Dan claims is 65 hours long (although five hours of content have actually been cut) and boast 300,000 animations, 500,000 lines of dialogue recorded by 700 voice actors, and even more lines of code.”

That’s nuts, of course they will be hitting it hard with polish before launch.

“Back in 2010, just a few months before the game launched, an open letter allegedly written on behalf of the wives of Rockstar San Diego employees claimed the team was expected to work 60-hour weeks - 12-hour days, including Saturdays - or they would face disciplinary action.”

Lmao! 12 hour days are common in the states. That’s why the American economy can ramp up the way it does. A “crunch” for a few months before launch is nothing to bitch about. Certain trades require that all year, every year. And people do it happily when they are well compensated for it.

If you have your own business you work 24 hours a day. The biomutant devs are like 30 folks who used their collective personal savings to build a game. The basically work for free and bet their savings on a hit and I love it, I hope it kills sales. Who is going to bitch about having to create red dead 2? Wow your job sucks bro, creating 300k animations. I kid they are probably great.

For people who canceled their pre order, remember that by cancelling ur not also appreciating the hard work of the employees, low sales number often go hand in hand with fired employees

And crunch is happening quite often in gaming industry, big studios like naughty dog and cdproject both also practicing crunch

Crunch is bad, but we also have to appreciate the hard working employees efforts whom are obligated to do such thing

what's funny to me is all the people complaining this is wrong and then run out and buy the game day 1. 🙄

Intense. I hope them all the best.

The team was working 100 hour weeks, to me that means that the studio itself was operating well beyond its standard hours, not necessarily individuals themselves (although there is no doubt that plenty of overtime was offered). Granted there are people willing to work 14 hours a day, every day.

Is this even legal?

Everybody disliking this story because "it's too many hours" .. my bro... get off yo lazy ass and get sum ambition. These folks like the grind &/or crunch as much as NaughtyDog. It's part of the job but to them it's about making art better.. so just enjoy every little bit of the game because a lot of work went into every little detail.

RS, What the hell? These people are not robots! They better get some nice big bonus checks!

And that is why, we need to unionize the game industry. we shouldn't have developers be burned out of the game industry like this and risking their health just for a bigger scope. i'd rather they reduce the scope of their game instead of overworking developers like this. in general, why do we need such huge open worlds, it just means they need more developers and crunch more for all the content. it's really sad.

You know the company's exec is in a bubble and a hypocrite when he bragged about his employees worked their asses off for 100 hours per week,yeah like that's something to be proud of.
I don't care if it's only few of them voluntarily or "they have love and passion" excuse I play games for 10 hours and that wear me out too and I loved games but too much is too much.
I won't be getting the game,wild west was never my type and now this crunch work ruin my life for the company thing made this a sure skip for me.

I'm passionate about video games but I still take a break otherwise I'm not efficient

man that's like 14 hours a day for all 7 days.... wtf man atleast delay it a bit. this is just sad to read.

gamers are a odd bunch,the most pro-corp users I've ever seen they champion being raped of their monies, champion being overworked . . .truly a strange people

Was there not something about the first game's crunch time that ended up with complaints from staff and investigation into lack of compensation? Surprised they would want that repeated.

Got to make sure that those horse ball sacks shrink properly in the cold.😆

Yikes I hope they get a break after release

Modern slavery

So 14 hours every day 7 days a week, sounds healthy

Those poor developers, that ain't right. When Amy Hennig was working at Naughty Dog she, we'll after she left, she talked about the hellish hours that had to be worked, how you were pulled away from your family life and missed important events. Sounds like game development is liking working in a sweat shop and the pay isn't even as good as most people think it would be. That's too bad for all of those employees, gamers don't understand what sacrifices have to be made, human nature "the world revolves around me, I'm not happy so make me happy" or "that was yesterday, what have you done for me today?" I'm sorry Rockstar development team..... If this was meant as a publicity stunt to show dedication, youve really painted yourselves out to real assholes, I'm actually happy to see the comments section filled with how horrible this actually is. Some say "Well, it's their choice to work those hours" or "They make a lot of money so it's gratifying" Well, no, I know a guy that wanted for years to work for Blizzard and now he does. He's a programmer I believe and doesn't make a lot, he makes average pay. They work those hours because they have too, you have to make money to take care of your family ya know and often times that requires working a lot, still, in this day and age just to get by, even have to work multiple jobs, even in a dual income society. It's not really that easy. It's a sweatshop. And that chunk of money made? That doesn't go to the developers. Remember the Call of Duty Bonus incentive issue at Activision that lead to the team leaving and building Respawn at EA? They have to fight for that, and that's the heads of the development company and the publishers make all the money. Activision was started off of the idea game developers get credit for what they do, but it hasn't stayed that way, no, the little guys, the ones that make all the sacrifices and work the long hours make jack while the suits rake in all the money. Watch the bonus features for God of War II, Corey Barlog wasn't living in a mansion, not even really in a house, he was living in an apartment during the making of that game and he was the Lead Game Director.

Look I wouldn't want to work that many hours so I'm not advocating it, but the same people up on their high horse crying about this are the same people that would be screaming if the game got delayed. There's work to do and it has to be done. That's the nature of the business. Any business.

We've all heard about crunch time. If your not prepared to do it then making games isn't for you.

All the crying lol