Rockstar Games: New employees talk about further development of GTA 6

Over the past month, following the announcement of an end to teleworking to begin the final phase of GTA 6 development and a return to the office from April, the situation within the Rockstar Games teams seems to be tense and quite confusing. In late February, new Rockstar employees spoke anonymously to our colleagues at Aftermath.

February 29, Rockstar Games officially announced Grand Theft Auto VI will officially enter The final stage of its development And for that occasion, A famous singer will put an end to teleworking. So Star Firm employees were asked to return to the office five days a week by mid-April.

After this statement by the Vice President Jennifer KolbeMany employees expressed his dissatisfaction, fearing the return of numerous toxic practices within the company. The situation was so critical that the British union was even approached by the Rockstar employees to assert their rights and express their concerns to the management who were unwilling to discuss and even negotiate with its employees.

In the first statements, several employees criticized Rockstar for a lack of communication, with a very short deadline of just a month and a half to find a solution and return to the office. Many disabled or ill employees criticized Rockstar for its lack of information about their situation and whether this return to the office affected them.

New statements that are very worrying for the future of GTA 6 development

Three weeks after this first case, new testimonies reach us directly in the line of our colleagues aftermath. These are two new employees who want to express, anonymously, the lack of communication with a situation that seems to be stabilizing.

The only news I’ve heard is that some people have been reprimanded in different ways for disagreeing with Rockstar’s plan. But otherwise, we await more information from management on how this will all work.

Anonymous testimony from a Rockstar Games employee.

The main reasons given by Rockstar are productivity, so that development does not fall behind. As well as security, to avoid further leaks. At this level, here’s what Star Firm employees reveal:

Safety is certainly the easiest argument to accept in good faith, because we have leaks, and they are a serious problem. We must do everything in our power to make it more difficult for attackers to access our systems.

Anonymous testimony from a Rockstar Games employee.

No matter what setup we had, we always had leaks. With Red Dead Redemption 2, we had a leak when the game launched. There will never be 100% security. People will be motivated to leak our content because there is a lot of interest in the products we produce.

Anonymous testimony from another Rockstar Games employee.

In addition to the return to the office and the end of teleworking, Rockstar intends to discontinue all available tools for remote working. This includes a number of tools that allow you to always have an overview of work progress even when you are not in the office. Once again the employees of Star firm express regret.

We won’t be able to respond to Slack messages and emails when we’re at home, which is a big, big loss since a lot of our work is intercontinental.

Anonymous testimony from a Rockstar Games employee.

For many players and fans, Rockstar’s decision made sense and many players were happy to see the star-studded firm make this decision. According to many players, teams need to be present together in the office to move development faster and limit leaks. For Star Firm employees, teleworking is not a barrier to productivity. vice versa.

If you’re a programmer, it’s much easier for you to work remotely than other roles that involve acting, like mockups and the like. But the reality is that for most development team members, you don’t need to be in the office every day to do your job.

Anonymous testimony from a Rockstar Games employee.

If we look at our previous project, Red Dead Redemption 2, where we worked in an office for five days, we are still working remotely with all the other studios. So whether you’re in the office or not, you’re still working remotely… you’re working with a lot of people on a lot of teams. Most of them are not in the workplace.

Anonymous testimony from another Rockstar Games employee.

In their statements, two Rockstar employees clarified that the entirety of GTA V was developed remotely on the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Proving that it was possible to do.

Finally, crunch culture is back on the carpet. A real shock to certain employees in the video game industry (and not just at Rockstar). On this topic, the first employee revealed:

We are anxious to return to this state. I was involved in two projects, both of which resulted in conflict. The first was extremely difficult. My hair was much less gray then. We want to continue the progress we have made as a company to eliminate this toxic culture.

Anonymous testimony from a Rockstar Games employee.

If you have to stay late to manage a meeting, which can be as simple as a quick Slack message, then commute on top of getting home later that night, which obviously affects your personal life. With the policy we currently have, if you are mildly ill, you can work from home as long as your boss agrees. In a world where we are still dealing with Covid, being able to be away from the office and just focus on your colleagues is a huge advantage. This advantage will be completely lost… this will reduce the productivity of the company.

Anonymous testimony from a Rockstar Games employee.

We are concerned that this will cause us to lose staff or have a significant negative impact on people’s health. This is a very anti-parental measure. For people with disabilities, this is a big problem.

Anonymous testimony from another Rockstar Games employee.

For Rockstar’s employees, there is also a great danger of being affected by the crisis in the video game industry and this return to the office will also be an excuse for Rockstar to fire some of its employees who refuse to return to the office. desk.

If you make it so that (people) can no longer work effectively in the company, they have no choice but to leave.

Anonymous testimony from a Rockstar Games employee.

This is obviously cheaper because you avoid paying for layoffs. If you can leave people on their own, you don’t need to pay them.

Anonymous testimony from another Rockstar Games employee.

On this issue, Aftermath was able to speak with former members of Activision Blizzard who used similar methods by ending teleworking last year. Thus, many employees decided to leave the company without any severance compensation. This affected many employees, both young and long-term employees and managers. Still according to Aftermath’s statements, this wave of departures caused numerous production difficulties for Activision-Blizzard projects. Six months later, these concerns are still on the agenda. Rockstar employees now fear the same will happen to the star-studded firm.

Rockstar employees fear that Rockstar’s decision could destabilize the teams and create additional pressure that could harm the development of GTA 6.

There should be people who have experienced the end of the project, who know what to do in that situation and who know how to make the best decision to solve the problem, rather than those who don’t have this experience and who can. If it were not for this pressure, they would not have made the mistakes. It would be very bad to lose key people in the team.

Anonymous testimony from a Rockstar Games employee.

For Rockstar employees, the decision and timing chosen by management is really less of a blow. A hostage situation of sorts that doesn’t really leave them a choice:

The fact that they waited to make this decision until the situation (in the video game industry) became so dire, with so many layoffs, doesn’t make me particularly kind to management.

Anonymous testimony from a Rockstar Games employee.

It seemed very opportunistic to me that the state of the industry was such that management was forced to accept whatever decision they made, as you would be more than remotely likely to find another job in the industry.

Anonymous testimony from another Rockstar Games employee.

Two Rockstar employees also call on their colleagues to join the IWGB union in an attempt to defend themselves if management decides to pressure the employees.

We must work relatively behind the scenes, as Rockstar has an anti-solicitation policy that prevents the distribution of union material in the studio. By making it public, I think we have a lot more people joining. I hope that we are unionized in the UK, and that other studios can be unionized, and that we can all come together to make decisions that we think will benefit the company and the projects in the long run. In the long run, we must continue to make these style-defining products while maintaining the high-quality staff.

Anonymous testimony from a Rockstar Games employee.

Three weeks after Jennifer Kolbe’s statement, and just three weeks before the start of the final phase of development, the situation is very tense and on the verge of a break between Rockstar’s employees and their management. can continue.

(source)

Have a great weekend everyone at Rockstar Mag 🙂