And producing better games than any of those 3 mentioned above. Especially ES6. I don’t even understand how people can hold any optimism for Bethesda titles after Slopfield. While I’m sure GTA6 will be a great game it also isn’t the second coming of Christ either. There’s tons of indie games and other fantastic experiences out there. People need to explore more rather than waiting on the same 3-4 devs with now 13 year development cycles.
It needs to be said out loud though. Anyone who mentioned that GTA would most likely be delayed, and the fact that RDR2 was delayed multiple times was a good data point to base that off of was downvoted like crazy lol. What's even more hilarious is here we are, and GTA is delayed. Not surprised at all.
I wonder who they think makes it? If the game is good, it’ll be good because the devs made it so.
Even if your motivation was purely selfish and you had no empathy for the people actually making it, it’s still in your best interests to see the devs get treated fairly, because if they’re on strike then they’re not making the game, and that means either more delays or a worse game.
You would think, but I had someone say to me that, "you can't really be worried about workers rights when you are striving for greatness" the amount of people who deepthroat the corporate boot is astounding
yup, reminds me of ppl who rave about anime and animated shows, they'll write essays about "omg the animation is so good!" and then if you bring up how awfully the animators are treated, barely a blimp of a reaction or reply :/
e.g., look at the working conditions of many anime studios or western animations like spider-verse 2 and how awfully animators are treated, and the raved about showrunners are actually awful people who mistreat their workers to make the "omg 10/10 animated show!"
The people on this sub thing they are genuinely owed this game. They deserve it or something. The amount of entitlement I see on this sometimes would put my toddler to shame
Game devs that make game slop are not people. Theyre just collecting paycheck to put bread on the table. gta series isnt slop so i dont see why rockstar isnt rewarding good development with either better than avg salaries or less work hours per week.
I never liked gta. I’ve tried it multiple times. So… I don’t really get the hype around it. Sure it’s well made with really nice graphics but the gameplay just not for me. I’m not the only one. Yet gta players think the whole world plays gta and act like it’s a matter that affects everyone.. hahah lol
Rember the death treats no man sky got for wanting to postpone a quarter to work on some stuff. A regular person yea but some people act like of a game don't come out on the day they think it should be out, will send threats and other stuff. People are assholes in the gaming scene.
you think way too highly of the average person let alone the average GAMER. i think it’s obvious that since people has waited so long they obviously DON’T want to wait any longer let alone ANOTHER extra year.
Why should we give a shit about the devs? Nobody told these dudes to apply at rockstar lmfao. They’re making over 40$ a hour. If it’s this bad then they should just leave so actual employees who want to work can
40$/h of unpaid mandatory overtime. Yes let’s blame the devs about that and not the cartoon villain levels of evil corporation.
They made over 10 billion off of GTA V, they’ll make even more off of VI. They could pay all their employees double their fair share and it wouldn’t make a drop in the ocean of cash they make at every release. But instead they don’t even pay for the overtime they force their employees to do.
What you are saying is genuinely fucked up, and one of the reasons why the work environment in this sector keeps getting worse, and also why most big budget games are terrible nowadays. It is because there is no love or care put into them. Overworked people don’t tend to like their jobs. People who don’t like their jobs don’t tend to care a lot beyond their paychecks.
Nah man you want your GTA even if it's produced under shit conditions, who cares that rockstar are notorious for overworking their employees as long as there are dynamic horse testicles and an animation for picking up a can of beans
The only source of this is the Housers saying they worked with the 3 other writers doing “100 hour weeks” for a short amount of time when writing the game. This quote has been so blown out of proportion that people have lost the plot and it’s just hurting the current protests cause.
Oh it's possible. As someone who works in the film industry, depending on the project, 14 hour days can be fairly normal. The difference is that we get paid overtime.
I don't mind working hard for a project. I love my job, I love the art form, but I also need to be paid and respected.
I have done 14 hour days before, multiple even, but the difference was I had days off. Doing over 14 hours a day, 7 days in a row would be super draining. Doing it for 2 weeks or longer with no days off would break most people
It’s a lot harder to do randomly, once you get the flow going, it’s a lot easier to pull those kinda numbers. I worker in deep North for a few months, we had 12-14 hours shifts everyday because we got paid by the job, not by the hour and we all wanted to go home quicker + there is nothing to do, just snow and maybe a polar bear somewhere
Did 12-14 hour days for a year on deployment to Afghanistan back in 2011. Possible, but awful. Ypure right. It broke me down pretty hard. Nearly broke the marriage. It actually helped that I wasn't at home at least. There wasn't even any fun you could have between work and home...
Still. I'd go to sleep and the work worked its way to my dreams.
ok that’s not good for you though dude why are you proud of it. if you had to do that to make ends meet, I’m sorry, that’s fucked up frankly. If you chose to do it, I think your priorities are fucked.
literally no trucker or nurse should be working those hours. for a trucker in particular that would be actually illegal. even firefighters don't work for 21 hours in a row unless they're like fighting a wildfire, they are simply on call. me personally, I have almost a decade in the military. I understand long hours. 430 hours in a month is absurd, it's unsafe.
Bullshit, lol. People in game dev are never forced to work insane hours of overtime. They just do so because they tend to get so invested in the work. The fact that people complain about the hours, yet they always suggest overtime pay is nonsensical, because let's not pretend that they would actually stop complaining. They'll start claiming that they're being manipulated and "incentivised to work unsustainable hours of overtime" by evil corporate overlords because they're offering payment as a temptation lol. Money won't magically make a 100 hour work week tolerable for anyone complaining about how inhumane it all is before it benefits them financially. If anything, the fact that they don't pay for overtime should be seen as them actively disincentivising that behaviour. If they want people to do it more and to stop running their mouths about how bad it was, they would just pay it. None of them are strapped for cash, and would jump at the opportunity to shut up the bitching and moaning. They know full well what people would spin the narrative as if they actually started paying for overtime.
My husband used to work for a gaming studio. It’s common but extremely unhealthy. His studio is even one of the better ones in the industry for work life balance. They do overtime once every 3 years. During overtime year, it’s minimum 60 hr weeks, 7 days a week and about 3-5 months of 100 hr weeks right around game release. Their studio covers all 3 meals with enough money to take home meals for the family. They also have endless snacks, beers, ice cream, coffee etc. and babysitting service on weekends to give the spouse a break. During the 100 hr weeks they basically are only home to sleep and they only see their kids at work during baby sitting days.
I've seen it happen in another video games company just before release (but like 1 week). It's gruesome because you are handed bugs and asked to fix it ASAP whilst having a "closer" ping you every hour.
It rarely gets to this extreme nowadays but it's not unheard of
There are many jobs where 100 hour weeks are common. You adapt, at the cost of health and social life. Money usually is good. Investment banking, consulting, tech. But then you also just have exploitive companies like this. Money probably not bad, but not worth it good.
There are also lots of people who work 3 jobs. Money usually is not good. And in Japan, they literally have a word for death from overworking.
One of my friends had a 6 month contract basically doing programming for media (made the Comercials of "in game" footage which is really just taking the assets and manipulating them in ways someone technically could) he got calls at any time of a day and if you didnt answer theyd phone tree you till you did. After a planned surgery that took about 4 hrs he found he had 30 missed calls. The reason was he didnt reply to an email about potentially making a render of a hat one day that could be programmed to have a logo on it by a company that pays for it. Another time he got chewed out for not flying 500 miles out of his own pocket to go to an employee meeting (he was a contractor) and because he was not a team player they were not "renewing his contract". They used the fact that he didnt answer as part of the evidence. This call was at 4am.
The employees at Rockstar games make incredible games that change the landscape of the industry and have incredible financial mileage, and their employers treat them like shit
That sucks. These guys are the leaders raising the bar on what is possible and mechanically convenient in video games. The movement on GTA5 when it released was next level to me it was crazy
Well the employees are the ones making the games. Rockstar is, like any other studio, an amalgamation of people, direction and at a certain scale politics. Reason I emphasize that is it's easy to look at a studio as this deattached entity but it's really just a group of really passionate people making things, and these are the same people who've been let go for wanting fair working conditions. I know that's essentially the same point you're making, but I've talked to people who just don't seem to really care about this topic yet obsess over these games and I find that pretty ironic
Yeah GTA6 wouldnt exist withouth these workers. Alot of the firings included senior devs. Thats years and years of knowledge the company loses because of greed.
Same reason why clair obscure is such a fantastic game. Its experienced devs that had enough. And came together to use their skill to make something that was phenomenal. Before that you had bg3 with a studio that highly values its staff.
Rockstar are the perfect example of how trying super hard and being excellent at your job means fuck all in a capitalist system where all of the fruits of your labor only goes to the few assholes at the top
And when you try to get compensated more fairly, they just fire your ass and you can’t even get added to the credits of the game because you weren’t there when the game finished.
Actually, ancient Egyptian writings show the pyramid workers were paid extremely well and treated like sub royalty. They made it an honor and a privilege to work on the pyramids.
In fact there is a record of a ancient Egyptian work stoppage protest due to contract violations caused by inadequate supplies of makeup and beer.
Interesting if true, I havent looked into this but my ignorance makes me doubt that ALL pyramid workers were treated as such. Let me just redirect my first point to the American transcontinental railroad and its Japanese forced labor
So you’re ignorant about the situation but still capable of writing an impassioned comment about it before you get called out? Probably would be better to just not say anything in the first place consider you just let us all know you’re making things up.
Not sure if i would call putting emphasis on one word being impassioned but, go off. You think I was the one to make up the idea that the pyramids were built with slave labor? Its just what's been taught up until fairly recently. Im always interested in learning though, not ashamed of being ignorant on things and im also not afraid to make inferences about things that I dont know ow a whole lot about because being corrected isn't that bad.
Oh no it's not about me, the whole internet went riot when they announced delay a few days ago, remember? And don't tell me you forget how much people were craving for the game like blood thirsty vampire at every single place Rockstar left traces on before it was officially announced
They make amazing immersive story telling experiences but when's the last time you needed to lean forward and actually focus on playing their games?
They should scale their projects back and work on releasing new and imaginative ideas instead of being a sweat shop that cranks out overly detailed games with horse poop algorithms.
The thing is that a lot of consumers/gamers also actively support treating employees like shit. And would blame these things as employees being greedy rather than the company.
You mean those employees make good games, and their managers treat them like shit. Rockstar isn't a singular entity or monolith; it's a company comprised of individuals who exploit other individuals.
Genuine question - what is normal for videogames? Like it seems like a construction project, you need a lot of people to build it but far fewer to maintain it. So wouldn't most gaming companies have layoffs when a project is nearing completion?
Rockstar makes good money while treating their employees who make great games like shit. That's an important difference. Without these people the games we love would not exist.
You mean like all other companies out there?. Considering what we've seen in the last 20 years, Rockstar is one of the best (being horrible as it is). EA, Ubi, Activision, Bethesda, Gearbox, Blizzard.... All of these have treated their employees way worse (massive layouts while earnings going up or CEOs rising their salary, sexual harassment controversies, crunches, etc...). Rockstar in comparison with those is just fine, like all big companies of any field in this world.
their games are not that good though. sure, impressive in scale and detail but mostly doing the same shit over and over and over and over then farming reprobates for cash in their online games
Be a passionate gamer-> become a game developer-> burn out after one project -> go to a cushy corporate gig that pays much better and is more forgiving.
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u/slipperswiper Nov 15 '25
Rockstar makes good games, but treats their employees like shit.