100 Hour Work Weeks Were Not UncommonÂ
Rockstar is going to overhaul its workplace place culture after coming under fire for overworking its employees. It was revealed that in the months leading up to the release of Red Dead Redemption 2, some employees had to work 100 hours a week in order to meet the deadline. Rockstar Lincoln was reported to have some of the worst working conditions among the various development teams. Three anonymous employees for Rockstar Lincoln have stated that certain changed were made to lessen their workload. Rockstar has promoted them from temporary workers to full-time workers. This will grant better job security and more stable finances for the workers moving forward. However, we do not know how many people are currently working at Rockstar Lincoln. So it is hard to gauge how many people will be affected by these changes.
Rockstar is now allowing their employees to take their phones with them to their desks. Something that was prohibited beforehand. They are also experimenting with something called “flex time”. Flex time is going to let the employees have more freedom over their work schedule
There are many companies that have been accused of overworking their employees during “crunch time”. Kojima Productions also uses the practice of ramping up the work hours of employees in order to push a game out on time.
It is hard to imagine how much work goes into modern video games. Let alone massive projects like Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto. Rockstar has mentioned previously that they would be releasing games at a much slower pace moving forward. This could be simply due to the fact that huge open-world games take thousands of hours to finish. But also as a way to lessen the workload for their employees and improve conditions and morale.