Rockstar employees speak up: abuse, threats, harassment... -

[PS1gamenwatch]

Rockstar Games Employees Face 60+ Hours Weeks, Sexual Harassment, Zero Work/Life Balance | SegmentNext

What's it like working at Rockstar Games? Isn't it a dream come true for any developer? A dream can quickly turn into a nightmare.

segmentnext.com

What’s it like working at Rockstar Games? Isn’t it a dream come true for any developer? Working with Rockstar Games means being part of a development studio that creates some of the best open world narrative-driven games. Games like GTA, Red Dead Redemption, and LA Noire make billions of dollars in revenue. Surely, it must be great being a part of Rockstar Games, isn’t it? Well, a lot goes into developing these gigantic experiences and developers sacrifice so much to deliver the final product to us. Sadly, the culture at Rockstar Games isn’t making life easier for them.


Some of the developers work 60+ hour weeks and the “work to life balance is completely non-existent,” said one developer. “When you crunch, you crunch hard,” said another Rockstar Employee. Crunch is a plague in our gaming industry as developers are pushed to the limit by pretty much every AAA game publisher. Jason Schreier’s report earlier this year revealed how BioWare referred to crunch time as “BioWare Magic.” Where the studio waited till the last second to make meaningful decisions and changes needed to get the ball rolling on Anthem.

Anyways, after such hard work the least a developer can ask for is appreciation for the work he puts in. However, the upper management not only shows a lack of appreciation for its developers but many employees complain about not being paid for overtime. It seems crunch time and overtime is considered part of the job at Rockstar Games.

“Heavy technical debt and lack of organization, and very long periods of crunch” is a common complaint from various programmers, developers, and testers. To make matters worse, there are reports of sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment and bullying is something which needs addressing properly. Perpetrators still get promotions/keep their position of authority and victims are ignored, one developer shared anonymously.

Contractors take a hard hit as after so much work and crunch, there is still not a clear path to getting a permanent job at Rockstar. “Some people seem to get them (jobs) for time served yet others get them for being mates with their leads.”

Internal politics often affect the team morale and toxic managers are to blame “who use overtime and ‘loyalty’ as a weapon to play team members off against each other.” Developers often don’t feel a sense of contribution to the project due to the sheer size of the teams. It is easy to be lost within a large set of people working on a project and not even be recognized.

There are multiple complaints which you can see here.

The crunch culture isn’t something that’s limited to Rockstar Games. It is not a studio issue, it is an industry issue. Inhuman timings and unpaid overtime are becoming a norm at AAA publishers.

 

[whatever I feel like]

Mehta, I do half of that shit. Boo, hoo, hoo they talk about how hot the women are and crack jokes about people based in their taste in games.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Why do people even work as vidya developers in the first place?

 

[Autisimodo]

Shit like this is why I'm glad I decided to keep programming as a hobby and not turn it into a career.

 

[WhoBusTank69]

Why do people even work as vidya developers in the first place?

Videogames and modding software/animating/etc. can be fun on their own.
Unfortunately that falls apart with deadlines and people yelling at you to hurry up. Like @Autisimodo said it's a good idea to keep hobbies as hobbies and not careers. Vidya went to shit the more commercialized it got with a business sense overriding the old ways of a bunch of assholes making games for fun in a basement.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Videogames and modding software/animating/etc. can be fun on their own.

Yep. At least some games are still made for fun.

(my favorite home-made game is probably SpaceEngine)

 

[Lemmingwise]

This is why you don't choose a life doing something a lot of people love doing. There is so much competition that you'll be squeezed for every inch of lifeblood you have.

 

[Clop]

Almost 70% recommends the company on that page. The complaints here and there are mainly about the crunch times. Didn't see any sexual harassment complaints but the site is garbage so eh.

If you take the article at face value it sounds like a complete disaster but the reviews themselves don't seem that way. It's just your usual crappy working conditions in a highly competitive career. And only complete fuckwits take sexual harassment claims on their word anymore.

 

[An Ghost]

But their games are really good and often break sales records. Plus the last time stuff like this surfaced about RDR2, it was all taken from an out of context quote from twitter.
Here’s what somebody said without a character limit

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.

It’s almost like this article is shitty clickbait that came out 6 months late.
“Rockstar makes people work overtime without pay and here’s why it’s bad but also an industry wide issue for any studio”

 

[V0dka]

But their games are really good and often break sales records. Plus the last time stuff like this surfaced about RDR2, it was all taken from an out of context quote from twitter.
Here’s what somebody said without a character limit

It’s almost like this article is shitty clickbait that came out 6 months late.
“Rockstar makes people work overtime without pay and here’s why it’s bad but also an industry wide issue for any studio”

It doesn't matter if they treat people like shit, people are willing to work in videogames no matter what. To these people it's like telling people you work at Disney even though all you do is sweep up the vomit and the manager forces you into the broom closet to suck his cock every so often.

But DISNEY. DISNEY MAGIC. Your soyboy friends will be so jealous you work for DISNEY.

 

[UE 558]

This stripping story sounds extremely fishy, why would something that blatant not be reported? Also, why would the guy who reported the controversy just leave the company altogether instead of staying to seek justice? If the VP who did the crime was untouchable, why would leave the company anyway? Why doesn’t the allegeged stripper tell the cops to protect other employees, if this is true, you should be protecting the employees of one of my favorite single player devs instead of just letting him rape other people

And as expected, Jim Spermwhale is just crying SJW crocodile tears for his socialist buttbuddies at REEEEera and r/LateStageCapitalism instead of feeling legitimate sympathy the man who claims he was violated.

 

[RG 448]

Some of the developers work 60+ hour weeks and the “work to life balance is completely non-existent,” said one developer. “When you crunch, you crunch hard,” said another Rockstar Employee.

If they’ve got time to talk to the press they’ve got time to work on the next GTA. Chop-chop!

 

[SmileyTimeDayCare]

If you don't like your job or think you can do it better DO EEET FAGGOT.

 

[An Ghost]

It doesn't matter if they treat people like shit, people are willing to work in videogames no matter what. To these people it's like telling people you work at Disney even though all you do is sweep up the vomit and the manager forces you into the broom closet to suck his cock every so often.

But DISNEY. DISNEY MAGIC. Your soyboy friends will be so jealous you work for DISNEY.

The same for animation studios. CG in movies is usually done by companies who bid to do it for less and less. This usually results in stressed out, over worked and under paid employees but they keep at it because they love movies or were inspired as a kid. The movie sausage party had a lot of articles about how the working conditions but the people who do it would rather animate in a cubicle than do spread sheets in a cubicle

 

[V0dka]

The same for animation studios. CG in movies is usually done by companies who bid to do it for less and less. This usually results in stressed out, over worked and under paid employees but they keep at it because they love movies or were inspired as a kid. The movie sausage party had a lot of articles about how the working conditions but the people who do it would rather animate in a cubicle than do spread sheets in a cubicle

Yeah but spreadsheets don't have month long crunch periods where you're just eating takeout and sleeping on the floor next to your computer. They are just deluded idiots. You did it for the love of the games industry? The games industry doesn't care whether you live or die.

 

[TrippinKahlua]

And the Me Too generation rages on.

 

[UE 558]

And the Me Too generation rages on.

More or less, I get the feeling that this story about the VP is a repeat of KickVic.

Call me back when there’s more evidence than fat soyboys crying on Polygon and REEEEEEEera

 

[Wyald]

Shit like this is why I'm glad I decided to keep programming as a hobby and not turn it into a career.

Lucky you. I work as a developer and I'm getting sick of people dropping every single case thinking it is a bug on my desk and constantly bitching thinking it will make me code faster.

 

[Computer Boy]

#GameDevsRiseUp

 

[Recoil]

I actually hung out with one of their illustrators a couple of times, nothing work related but I mention him because he said that their company culture is beyond insane & the title of Rockstar is very apt. He told me to imagine a whole bunch of very intelligent cats writing code, doing drugs and fucking the occasional stripper. People burn out and drop out because they party just as hard as they work.
He was not talking of the place with fond regard. To be honest, he seemed tired as hell.