Rockstar Games has garnered quite a reputation as a studio that tends to rely on crunch to wrap up development on its games. In a new interview with Kiwi Talkz, former designer at the studio, Kris Roberts, has shed more light on the developer’s controversial reliance on crunch.
Speaking about transitioning his role from working on Midnight Club to Red Dead Redemption, Roberts said that he had been transferred from being an hourly employee to a “full-time” one. This also meant that there were more expectations placed on him about working longer hours without the studio having to pay him any extra money. “There was the expectation that you’ll be there by 9:30 [AM] and we’re going to stay until 6:00 [PM]. If you’re staying after that, there’s dinner available and blah blah blah.”
However, these expectations started changing over the course of time. Roberts explained that the core hours started to include half days on Saturdays, before those also became full days. “Eventually core hours expanded to include half days on Saturday, where you were expected to be there. Then core hours expanded to be full days on Saturdays. Then Sunday was ‘optional,’ but encouraged. By the end, we were working every day, all day.”
The final six months of development for Red Dead Redemption were described by Roberts as being a “blur” due to the number of hours he had to work. “You end up in an amnesiac state where you probably don’t have clear recollection or memory of exactly what was going on.”
Thinking back on his time at Rockstar, Roberts expressed feeling “conflicted” when he discussed these frustrations and grievances. He also confessed to partaking in “self-directed” crunch when working on the Midnight Club games. “I was doing that because I thought it was important or I wanted to be involved at that level, and it was me doing it.” With Red Dead Redemption, however, he said that there were “artificial” instances of crunch where the studio would call for “all hands on deck” to work overtime on weekends whenever executives like Leslie Benzies and Sam Houser were visiting the offices.
“I remember a couple specific examples of a Friday afternoon, [when] management would send out an email that said, ‘Just so we’re all clear, we need to be here this weekend.’ Then a follow-up email would say, ‘And this weekend doesn’t just mean Saturday.’ I’ve made promises to my kids about what we’re going to do this weekend. And Friday afternoon at 4:30 you’re telling me I need to be here on Sunday regardless of what’s going on. That’s unacceptable.”
“And it wasn’t because, ‘Oh, if you have a certain number of issues in Bugstar, or ‘If you have critical things that must be fixed before the next build,’ or ‘If you have a legitimate business case for putting in that weekend time, then we want you to be here.’ It was more like, ‘No, we need to put on the show of appearance that everybody’s here all the time, because we have an executive visiting or something.”
Roberts explained that one of the big reasons behind him leaving Rockstar was when he was tasked with letting his team – which worked on the multiplayer aspects of Red Dead Redemption – know about the mandated crunch. “It was certainly in the top four” of his reasons for leaving.
Currently, Rockstar Games has been accused of once more encouraging crunch. Along with this, members of the Rockstar Games Workers Union have also accused the company of withholding bonus payments and failing to address pay inequity among its employees.
