Rockstar Games Had Developers Work 100-hour Weeks For RDR2

The upcoming title from Rockstar Games has to be one of the most look forward titles that will be launching this Fall. With many eager to see what’s been improved and added from the 2010 Red Dead Redemption, there hasn’t been much that the studio revealed about the game since the announcement nearly two years ago.

Publisher Co-Founder recently spoke with entertainment outlet Vulture on how the game came to be with its release date being only two weeks from now. Rockstar Games’ Dan Houser told in the interview that the development team for the western title have worked “100-hour weeks” only in 2018. Known as ‘Crunch’, developers would work longing hours developing titles towards the game’s completion. This practice has been present with several games throughout the industry, most recently we discovered that following the layoffs for Telltale Games.

In the interview posted, an email from the publisher was also mentioned revealing that the time the developers worked the stated hours, is the most that they were urged when developing a game.

We’ve poured everything we have into [Red Dead Redemption 2]. We have really pushed ourselves as hard as we can.

As this news broke out, many reacted negatively to discovering the conditions that those at Rockstar Games have worked to making Red Dead Redemption 2 a reality. Soon after the backlash from the internet, Houser replied stating that the extreme working conditions only lasted for three weeks and only expanded to the game’s “senior writing team, which consists of four people, Mike Unsworth, Rupert Humphries, Lazlow and [Houser],”.

As this is reassuring that the time-consumed process lasted less than a month, it should be taken to awareness that this practice is well and present within the industry. Many developers are left stressed from the exceeding work hours, which can result to many health risking diseases from the game crunch. Houser followed up with a comment from being under fire, “we obviously don’t expect anyone else to work this way”. Referencing to the bigger head count development team.

Looking ahead, it’s undetermined if this incident will happen again for the publisher’s studio. As we have discovered the possible casting calls for Bully 2, things might change for how development time works within Rockstar Games.

Red Dead Redemption 2 will be available for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on October 26, 2018.

Source: Vulture