Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption 2 is now available, having garnered numerous positive reviews from several publications. It’s also helped raise stocks for Take Two Interactive, Rockstar’s parent company. After closing at 9:19 AM (GMT-4) on October 26th, the company’s stock was $120.70 USD on NASDAQ. It opened at $117.26.
Though it doesn’t reach the company’s high of $138 – which it experienced last month – it’s still very good, especially following the controversy of Rockstar’s crunch. Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser would clarify comments about crunch only being limited to senior writers on the project, himself included.
However, since then, more stories have come out regarding the studio’s mandatory and “encouraged” overtime periods, especially in Rockstar Lincoln, which is largely QA-centric. For now, the success of Red Dead Redemption 2 may make those months, if not years, of crunch seem worthwhile. But it remains to be seen how sustainable this model is, especially since companies like Ubisoft seem to be doing pretty well without it.