Telltale Games, the studio behind a resurgence of point and click adventure games with licenses like “The Walking Dead”, “Guardians of the Galaxy”, “Minecraft” and “Batman” on Sept. 21 tweeted a letter announcing they would be shutting down. According to The Verge, employees were given just 30 minutes notice before having to leave the building. Not just that they had to leave. They were given 30 minutes notice that they were fired.
Now, the studio is facing a class action lawsuit for violation of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), which requires benefits and at least a 60 day notice for firings from workplaces of 100 of more employees. This isn’t even getting into the longstanding accusations of unpaid overtime and overworking that have come out against the studio, as well as the executive and financial troubles that seem to have gone on right under fans noses for quite some time.
Why talk about this now? Well because, despite the recent outcry related to employee treatment and overworking thanks to the Telltale closing, on Oct 14, Dan Houser spoke to Vulture. The head of Rockstar Games, the studio responsible for “Red Dead Redemption” and the “Grand Theft Auto” series, spoke on the subject of the long awaited “Red Dead Redemption 2”, out on Oct 26.
“We were working 100-hour weeks,” said Houser in regard to employee treatment in 2018.
Now, clarifications have been made since, with Dan later saying in an email to Kotaku that this only extended to his four-man writing team and that they only worked over 100 hours a week for about four weeks. To help bolster this claim, Rockstar lifted their social media ban to allow employees to talk about their experiences at the company.
It’s notable that most of the tweets from people still at the company state that, while they’ve had to work overtime, it’s been nowhere near as bad as 100 hour weeks. Vivianne Langdon, a tools programmer at Rockstar’s San Diego office, tweeted that she has “only been asked to work on weekends once or twice in my entire time at (Rockstar)” and “the few instances when I work late overtime hours are generally because I'm in the ‘zone’…It is not the result of anyone forcing me to stay late or giving me impossible deadlines, but rather my own drive.”
Other employees, like Phil Beveridge, a senior code content designer, stated that while crunch time still exists, it has “definitely improved. Crunch on Red Dead Redemption 2 has definitely been a lot better that it was on GTA V.” Rockstar North tools designer Tom Fautley tweeted that he has been “asked, encouraged and expected to work overtime (both nights and weekends) when coming up to a big deadline.”
Other employees who have left the company were harsher in their descriptions. Job J. Stauffer, the co-founder of Orpheus Self-Care Entertainment who left Rockstar in 2009 said, “I can assure you that during the GTA IV era, it was like working with a gun to your head 7 days a week.”
Meanwhile Josh Mattyasovszky, who left in 2016, said, “I called it a day with (Rockstar) two years ago, and the same shit was in play – GTA Online just meant endless crunch, one DLC into the next.”
But the question remains: why? Why force these things on employees? Sure, Rockstar doesn’t technically force anyone to do overtime, but Jennifer Kolbe, head of publishing at Rockstar, told Kotaku, “A very long time ago, we decided that if you didn’t actually finish the game, then you wouldn’t be in the credits.” Meaning that if you’ve worked on the game in its entirety, but leave a month before release, chances are your name won’t be listed in the credits.
Unfortunately, even with the outcry surrounding Rockstar and Telltale, the chances of it actually changing much are slim. “Red Dead Redemption 2” is projected to sell upwards of 15 million copies. Likely due to the fact that its supposed to be a phenomenal game, receiving perfect scores from publications like The Guardian, Telegraph, Game Informer, IGN and Easy Allies.
This isn’t even uncommon in the gaming industry. Companies like Naughty Dog, creators of “Uncharted”, and CD Projekt Red, creator of “The Witcher” and the highly anticipated “Cyberpunk 2077“ are known for having massive crunch times as well. For an industry that creates worlds that contain dozens, if not hundreds of hours of content, it‘s almost inevitable. But it can be better. While sales numbers may not be affected, developers are starting to speak out more and more after Telltale and Rockstar’s controversies. Nothing may change now, but the gaming public will remember that.
Arthur Morgan, the lead character of Red Dead Redemption 2, riding a horse through the Western frontier.
Clementine (Right) and AJ (Left) the main characters of "The Walking Dead: The Final Season."
The various different games developed by Telltale, such as "The Walking Dead," "The Wolf Among Us," "Tales from the Borderlands," and "Minecraft: Story Mode."
The logo for Telltale Games.
The logo for Rockstar Games, specifically their New York City branch.
