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Rockstar Employees Badly Overworked, Say Wives
juicegg writes "Wives of Rockstar Games employees in San Diego recently published an open letter on their Gamasutra blog. The authors say that Rockstar employees are seriously strained by unending crunch periods of 12-hour work days and 6-day weeks. High levels of stress are leading to serious psychological and physical problems for some of the employees. They charge that studio management uses arbitrary, deceptive and manipulative practices to get employees to work more unpaid overtime hours at greater intensity — despite over $1 billion in Grand Theft Auto revenue. Among the blog comments, some current and past Rockstar employees are confirming problems with the studio. 'Ex Rocker' writes: 'What makes R* crunch periods different then any other studio is that they tell you the game has to be finished in 6 months, so let's start our final push to get this awesome game out there! 6 months turns into 1 year, 1 year turns into 2.' Other comments reveal worker hopelessness and general mismanagement at the San Diego studio. This turmoil is affecting development on upcoming games as well."
Read on for responses from Rockstar itself and other members of the industry.
An anonymous reader adds, "Everyone is talking about the fact Rockstar Games has addressed the accusations that it has forced developers at Rockstar San Diego into unpaid overtime to finish imminent titles. But I've noticed that a former GTA3/Manhunt designer (Chris Kruger) has a comment in this piece published Thursday about crunch in studios, suggesting the problem goes beyond Rockstar San Diego and is company-wide.
He says in Develop's Jury-style debate that the damage caused by excessive overtime can upend the out-of-work relationships developers have: 'Crunch is totally damaging, but much more so to the individuals involved. An almost failed marriage in my case. To the company the cost of crunch is very hard to define but any benefit at all is easy to measure. That's why it's such an easy decision to make for most companies. Unless there is a push back and the cost is made clear, it won't change. In my view self regulation doesn't work, and the only real solution is external regulation or utter agreement from the vast majority of staff on how to approach the matter.'
There's no easy way around the topic, but crunch is clearly damaging. When will the management at game studios address this troubling issue properly?"
He says in Develop's Jury-style debate that the damage caused by excessive overtime can upend the out-of-work relationships developers have: 'Crunch is totally damaging, but much more so to the individuals involved. An almost failed marriage in my case. To the company the cost of crunch is very hard to define but any benefit at all is easy to measure. That's why it's such an easy decision to make for most companies. Unless there is a push back and the cost is made clear, it won't change. In my view self regulation doesn't work, and the only real solution is external regulation or utter agreement from the vast majority of staff on how to approach the matter.'
There's no easy way around the topic, but crunch is clearly damaging. When will the management at game studios address this troubling issue properly?"
And then we can have the same great representation that the auto industry workers have, ensuring that their jobs are safe and profitable. And we can start approaching games in the same useful and productive ways that teachers approach teaching their students.
Sounds great! Where's the piece of paper for signups? I want to know so I can burn it.
A union is a monopoly by another name, and anyone who thinks that unions have anything to do with good products, good business, or sane long-term strategies is a fucking moron. Unlike auto construction or teaching*, video games can be done by tiny independent self-owned teams, and there's nothing stopping people from quitting and forming their own game studio.
* of course this is largely thanks to the teacher's union itself
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Would you also support the right of software companies to collude among themselves to keep wages low? Oh wait, that's actually illegal. Unions are just monopolies and there are good reasons why monopolies are bad, whether on the employer or employee side. Lower productivity and quality (just ask the US auto industry), barriers to entry to new workers entering the field therefore increasing unemployment, higher labor costs and therefore jobs moved overseas, barriers to entry to small business to the benefit of existing large businesses who can more easily meet union requirements etc etc.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I can see that you yearn for the good old days before unions. Ah, those were wonderful days! The Supreme Court and Congress were all on the side of big business.
But then that nasty DEPRESSION. And the fact that workers got PISSED OFF. And the fact that REVOLUTION was near.
Yeah, I can see that you yearn for the good old days.
Unless there's a HEALTHY strong OPPOSITION to big business, the little guy gets STEAMROLLED.
Enjoy your FOX propaganda.
The wives don't mind the money that comes in each paycheck. Oh but I don't get to seeeeeee him until the game is done. yeah and?
get a damned hobby.
My wife is a USDA vet supervising inspectors at a meat processing planet.
The employees there work 12 hour days, 6 or 7 days a week depending on whats going on at the various local farms.
If the guys slaughtering animals, and doing back breaking manual labor for minimum wage aren't bitching and are happy to be employeed, please tell me why I should give flying fuck about the whining of some well paid desk jockey who has been educated so could easily go do something else?
You ever wonder why people offshore jobs? Here is a good example.
Bunch of spoiled brats.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Because of the way game development works, you are almost certainly going to have a crunch time, and probalby a pretty heavy crunch time near the end.
Could outsourcing help?
I'm serious! We're always decrying the evils of offshoring and other outsourcing, but which would you rather do: allow some Indian coders to hack out the last-minute changes from this afternoon's meeting, or lose your marriage?
Hollywood movies also have "crunch time" during post-production, especially on big blockbusters with lots of special effects. What happens is that you get movies with end credits a mile long, because they include the names of everybody in every FX studio in Hollywood. They part out the work all over town, because there's no other choice. One studio can not handle the work.
Is this impossible in the videogame industry? Really impossible? I can't help but wonder whether the fact that videogame studios name themselves things like "Rockstar Games" might be symptomatic of an attitude that's prevalent in the industry. Maybe it's time to stop acting like "rock stars" and admit that you're working professionals just like anybody else, and that you need more manpower to meet your company's ambitions?
Breakfast served all day!
I wouldn't be so sure about that. It might be a policy at your company, but a look at California's Web sites shows there's still a clear overtime exemption for "employees in the computer software field." Governor Schwarzenegger clarified the law in 2008, by specifying that any software developer who is paid a minimum of $75,000 is exempt. So maybe they just changed the salary range at your company, and rather than divide developers into exempt and non-exempt ones, they decided to treat them all as non-exempt.
Breakfast served all day!
If game studios unionized there wouldn't be any video games produced. Union shops are for lazy-asses-shaped-like-chair stumps who don't DO anything but slack and cry when they have to work. Unions are notoriously corrupt and use "looking out for the worker" as a vehicle for extortion. Game shops push their teams too hard, but that's also how they get stuff done. Game developers suffer for their art.