Crunch is steadily becoming one of the biggest issues in the industry with lots of AAA heavyweights seeing highly unfair and often brutal work conditions for the employees and it was the case with multiple previous titles by Rockstar Games as well, including Red Dead Redemption 2. But what’s more unfortunate is that even after three delays, complaints of crunch time are already surfacing against the studio which includes ignoring pay inequity and weaponizing bonuses.
According to a new report by Game Developer, three members of the Rockstar Games Workers Union (RGWU) who have chosen to stay anonymous for fear of reprisal, accused the GTA 6 developer Rockstar Games, of several issues including a severe lack of transparency around pay and bonuses which the sources said are used to manipulate employees. Also, these employees weren’t part of the developers who were laid off for alleged union efforts that took place last year which was another stain in Rockstar’s overall reputation.
“When the bonus is particularly good, it can be a windfall, but often the bonus is disappointing and one can end up being paid considerably less than expected for the year,” stated one of the three members.
“The reasoning given for this is often nebulous, inconsistent between departments, even inconsistent between team members within the same department, and sometimes hinges on completely subjective or retroactive criticisms.”
The employees have also accused Rockstar for having a crunch culture and including straight up overtime practices in contracts: “Crunch is prevalent enough that the company built into our contracts, as standard, an opt-out of the Working Time Regulations that stops your employer being able to ask you to do more than about 10 hours extra each week,” said one of the employees.
“Since October, there have been unprecedented average wage increases in represented studios; for the first time ever, there is actually some financial incentive for crunch, and several other policies are changing after years of frustration. The timing is not coincidental—organizing works.”
However, a Take-Two Interactive spokesperson has provided the following statement when Game Developer reached out to the company:
“We strive to make the best games possible by giving our talented teams world-class work environments and ongoing career opportunities. We have fostered a culture which is focused on teamwork, excellence, and kindness, and where we support and reward the team across all levels of the business through competitive compensation and benefits policies. We are proud that as a result, our employee retention is well above the industry standard. We have received a request from a union seeking to discuss voluntary recognition. We value an open and constructive dialogue with all stakeholders and will arrange to meet.”
While crunch is something that shouldn’t happen with any game, it also indicates that GTA 6 may actually be far from being fully ready for release this year hence the overtime from the devs. Back when Cyperpunk 2077 came out in 2020, it was so riddled with all kinds of issues that it took multiple years for the devs to make it fully stable which indicated that the game may have came out much earlier than it should’ve. And as GTA 6 is way more complex than Cyberpunk 2077 in both scale and scope, it’s likely that even after this much delay, the open world behemoth might be arriving quite a bit earlier.
