Only a Handful of Senior Employees Worked 100 Hour Weeks on Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar Clarifies

Countless YouTubers currently scrambling to write a completely new script for their next outrage video.

If someone wants to offer me double pay I'll do a hundred hours a week.

Internet overreacting? Never heard of it.

That’s good to hear. I was always an “If” when talking about it. But yeah, that’s some sound passion.

I am a developer myself. Working overtime voluntarily is a normal thing. It just means you want to make sure your creation is working.

Awesome! Only a few more hours till the internet people complain about something else!

So, outside of the four guys that wanted to work crunch time for the writing towards the end of the development, everyone else that worked more chose to work the overtime.

And there's the whole story internet, but I can hear countless Twitter users burning holes into their keyboards and phones talking about how outraged they are.

I would also destroy myself mentally and physically to get more money.

Yeah right it's "their choice", not peer pressure or something like that. I don't think this is something to brag about.

@ShogunRok

When is the "comment of the week" section coming?? Your a contender for the win thus far!

I suspected some misreporting in the first place. Even with his clarification, which sounds fine to me, a lot of people including those reporting the story already set their mind. People will hear what they want to hear.

@ShogunRok
No just you tubers though. Most of the press jumped the gun and will rather go in length about past rumours than admit they misjudged the reports. Good on push square for not overreacting though.

Social bloody media. I bet most of the people with something to say wouldn't even be bothered to be upset if they had to phone in their outrage or pen a written letter of complaint like the old days. No recognition or 'likes' to make them feel good that way.

@ShogunRok and even more innumerable ones simply adding a remark about "corporate damage control excuses" because it's more spice and less work.

I worked 100 hours yesterday.

Still bet there is a crunch though.

‘Crunch’ is just a part of any industry. I don’t get why people get so worked-up (ha!) over it, when it comes to the video game industry.

If you get compensated for it I see no problem.

@kyleforrester87 Wow that really sucks for him. I’m glad he’s removed himself from that sort of environment.

Unfortunately crunch is just a part of life. E3 is crunch time for the Push Square staff, Black Friday/holiday season is it, if you’re working retail...it takes place everywhere.
It’s not right, but it’s not wrong either- it’s just a thing.
You should always have a choice & obviously get compensated for it, but I see nothing wrong with crunch in general.
If you want to succeed you have to put the work in.

Peer pressure can be a thing, but you would hope management would set that straight.
This obviously wasn’t the case here & I would think that the average Rockstar employee isn’t living off rice & beans (not that there’s anything wrong with that!).

@adf86
'The fact Dan houser said what he did originally without the need to clarify is rather telling that its the norm rather then the exception.'
Or maybe its telling on journalism going with unclear statement they can spin rather than asking clarification?

I thought this was obvious! It's 2018, if people were forced to work 100 hours a week (a ridiculous number) they would speak up, especially in a company like this...
People sure love outrages!

If even one person worked 100s of hours for weeks, that's too many. That is too much, and if they were good upper management people they would have sent him home.

That is, for example, 5 straight 16 hour days,and ONLY 10 hour days on Saturday and Sunday. So you are getting to work at 6 a.m., leaving at 10 a.m. (I'm assuming no lunch). With a 30 minute commute that means you are home from 10:30 p.m. until 5:30 a.m. That's messed up.

Out of college I had 3 jobs for 4 years. I would work 70-80 hour weeks and my body would be a wreck after 1 of them, and then I had to survive 2 more of them.

Don't let these upper 1%ers try to downplay this. It's still wrong and they should have sent them home. Money is not worth that much time of your life in a week.

@VotesForCows Kind of agree, but I think it's a more complex issue than most will admit. I was just poking fun at the knee-jerk reactions more than anything.

On the one hand, I don't think people should be working 100 hour jobs. On the other, how exactly do you stop people like Houser and his fellow senior writers doing it? At least they've been doing this long enough, I guess.

some people just care about the product they have worked hard on for years and years and care enough to push that extra amount to hit dead lines. Certain You Tube stars proactively try and disregard this fact and say its slave labour practice. Nobody is holding a gun to anyone's head

@Tha_Likely_Lad

youtube "stars" overpaid morons who haven't done a honest days work in their lives and only "work of handful of hours a week.

social media has a lot to answer for, just seems to breeding a culture of morons and bigots

@suikoden spot on pal

@ShogunRok Surely PushSqaure's OWN article simply titled: "Rockstar Worked 100 Hour Weeks to Get Red Dead Redemption 2 Done" only added to the hype train. Re-posting trash as a news outlet is no different the YouTuber's running to make videos.

@Omnicron That was all the information we had to go on at the time, and it was a very measured article. It's a lot different to YouTubers and certain games journalists who immediately threw Rockstar under a bus and called them worse than sh*t.

Not really. Reading "Rockstar Worked 100 Hour Weeks to Get Red Dead Redemption 2 Done" in massive font on the main screen allows people to jump to those same very conclusions. It looked very sensational.

I get that you want to be first or at least really fast with news but maybe it is better to wait for the context and be 'right' instead.

And I understand there was no context at the beginning, but saying that YouTuber's are scrambling to make outrage videos, for me, is exactly what Push Square created too. That's all.

Even if it's just a few senior employees doing this, there's clearly still a big issue somewhere. Something is going wrong if they feel compelled to work these insane hours.

@ShogunRok Just wanted to show some appreciation for the image selection. Nice.

@crimsontadpoles
Maybe they enjoy there job and want to give the best product they can at the end of the day it was there choice and no one forced them

@VotesForCows Yeah that's definitely part of what makes it a complex issue. You start to ask questions about whether your job is secure if you're not "fully" committed and things like that — but does full commitment require working 100 hours a week? It gets muddy very quickly.

@VotesForCows there is a lot wrong with the 'clarification' that honestly digs them in a deeper hole than the first statement. 'No one, senior or junior, is ever forced to work hard', suggests that they equate 'working hard' with doing excessive hours.

'we have some senior people who work very hard purely because they’re passionate about a project', which again repeats the excessive=work hard message, and then to add insult to injury, ties this in with having a passion for it, reinforcing the idea that this behaviour is viewed favourably, in that do the excessive hours and we'll view you as a passionate employee.

I agree with you, this attitude and behaviour has the potential to destroy lives, and I personally see this at home, with a partner in a senior position who is put under so much pressure to perform that 7 day weeks at 16 hours per day aren't unusual. Health is impacted, confidence is lost, and life is wasted, all because of a job, and this perception that excessive hours/passion for the job = desirable employee.

Really this article is a little flippant around the subject. @ShogunRok you suggest this is complex issue, when it most certainly isn't. One person working 100 hours a week, even once, no matter their seniority, is one person too many, and boasting about this in an interview makes it all the worse.

@Wraggadam Not sure it was ever a boast, though, it can just read that way. I think like Houser says, he was just trying to describe how much work the team's put into the game.

And I certainly think it's a complex issue — there are loads of factors that feed into it. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but I doubt anyone's going to march up to Houser and tell him and his writers to stop doing what they're doing and go home. And even if they did, I doubt they'd comply.

It's the same with anything. How do you stop an artist from slaving away on their masterpiece for days at a time? How do you stop my editor Sammy from writing news stories at 2am? If that attitude bleeds into employees lower down the ladder, it's a problem. But if they love what they do, can it be excused?

I wouldn't call it a simple issue.

The comparison to artist and Sammy are completely different kettles of fish.

As an artist working alone, you have no influence on others, and no elements of peer pressure that could harbour a toxic culture. That's your art, your job, and yourself to blame. For example, I'm self employed, with no employees, and nobody to set an example for, or potentially cause damage to, so if I choose to stay up all day working, then that is my personal issue. In the case of Rockstar, it is an Employer / Employee relationship, and Employers have a duty of care to their staff, so yes, somebody most definitely should be telling the writers to get up and go home, and the practice of excessive working should actively be discouraged. If this isn't done, it shows lack of card for the welfare of the team, and can appear to be encouraging a poor work/life balance. Houser needs to be very careful in how he describes the work put in by the team, that could have easily been done in any other way without glorifying working 100 hour weeks in an environment where there is already scrutiny around the 'crunch culture'.

@VotesForCows all goes to those at the top who probably couldn't care less if you dropped dead tomorrow. We need to remember, everyone is replaceable, and damaging yourself for the sake of a project is not worth it. You'll be mourned for about as long as it takes them to find the next person to fill your shoes and do the work.

Not sure how I feel about certain employees working crazy long hours like this. For my personal experience, I am a salaried employee working in health and safety at a research University with a background in HAZMAT. Part of my job involves responding to emergencies and consulting with emergency personal regarding incidents in laboratories. I have been called at 2 am for an emergency, been involved with it until my typical work hours, and stayed the rest of the day. This is fairly abnormal though, and being on the receiving end of it, I am fine with it. Especially knowing that I can be helpful to firefighters. I do not get paid overtime for this, it is simply part of the job.

Digging a bit deeper, graduate students working on their PhD's are often in the lab for crazy hours to get their research done. They are doing their own original research (often with incredibly hazardous materials), and often their experiments require abnormal hours, long hours, etc. They have a professor they answer to, but it is not like they have a supervisor making them work for hours on end. Their driving force is earning their PhD and a spot in academia. That life does not include a 9-5 schedule, and is far more demanding than a full time job. Which is the reason why I sometimes get called at 2 am.

Before I got into the safety side of research, I worked in labs and had similar experiences. The work simply cannot get done if I left at a specific time every day and my mind left work mode. When I was not in the lab, I was working on data analysis, writing or editing, and reading technical journals in my field simply so I did not fall behind. There was rarely a time I was not "working" despite not being in the lab. Even now not being actively involved in lab research, I am still constantly involved outside of work, because I need to be. I am either continuing my education, being involved in professional societies, and maintaining my professional certifications. I am usually at the office (more likely doing a safety inspection or training somewhere on campus) ~50-60 hours a week, and easily add another 10 on top of this from home. I can't remember the last time I only worked 40 hours in a typical week, at least in my professional career.

At least in the STEM fields, this is common when it comes to research. There is always a race for results, a race to get published, a race to get invited to speak about your research. I am not saying it is right, just that this is how it is, and I have no idea how academia would fix this.

I guess the point I am trying to make is, looking at the game industry, this seems to be a systemic issue without a simple solution.

@ShogunRok You're right about the fact that if someone goes off on their own there's not much to do to stop them. A couple of things are up to them though as well.

For example, if one of those four writers didn't want to do the excessive hours, but the other three were willing, there's not much of a chance he'd just abandon them and go home. Even though he'd have every right to, he'd still feel like he's not pulling his weight, even if the other three were all fine with it.

I appreciate the fact, if true, that it was one instance of it, but even when that happens, they should still play it on the dl. Mentioning a fact like that off handedly, with no reservations, in an article that's supposed to profile your company is irresponsible at the very least. Did anyone really need to know about that? Especially in Rockstar's case, which hasn't had the best history with working conditions.

And as someone else said in the comments, even Houser's second statement equates hard work with insane hours, which is insulting to the hundreds of people that I'm sure work very hard, and go home when they're supposed to.

Yes, no one had a gun to their head, but there's way subtler ways to force someone to do long hours, and making them feel guilty if they don't. That's some of the reasons why management should step in and send people home if things are getting out of hand, it's not always about the person doing the overtime. In a case like the above, where it was an isolated incident by senior management only, they shouldn't have even mentioned it.

@DrClayman @Wraggadam For the record I agree with all of this, I'm just saying it's a complex topic, and judging by the size of these replies, that's becoming more and more obvious.

@ShogunRok Oh definitely, we're both in agreement there.

This is unacceptable, what will people cry about now? Our outrage society needs something to rage against!

There are spikes and falls in all businesses, and if you will keep your working time line flat an not reflecting those wobbles you will end up with losses. You will loose a customer or their trust which will be reflected down to lower link of the employee chain and could end up with redundancies. Or you will end up with oversaturated market or overstock of your product for example, which also will be counted as losses. Many famous artists, scientists, passionate and creative people do work abnormal hours in some stages of their work, so why some senior writers from Rockstar can not do the same? If they feel they are artists, why not?

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