TechCentralTechCentral
    Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn YouTube
    TechCentralTechCentral
    NEWSLETTER
    • News

      MTN hires outgoing Icasa CEO Willington Ngwepe into top role

      16 August 2022

      Rain in embarrassing climbdown over Telkom statement

      16 August 2022

      Jo’burg to issue RFP for 500MW of electricity ‘within weeks’

      16 August 2022

      Load shedding returns, and may last until Thursday

      16 August 2022

      Coal miner Seriti plans R12-billion Mpumalanga wind farm

      16 August 2022
    • World

      Semiconductor boom turns to bust

      16 August 2022

      Tencent plans to offload R400-billion Meituan stake: sources

      16 August 2022

      Ether leaps higher on verge of Merge

      16 August 2022

      Institutions eye crypto but retail investors remain nervous

      15 August 2022

      Tencent woes mount, even after $560-billion selloff

      12 August 2022
    • In-depth

      African unicorn Flutterwave battles fires on multiple fronts

      11 August 2022

      The length of Earth’s days has been increasing – and no one knows why

      7 August 2022

      As Facebook fades, the Mad Men of advertising stage a comeback

      2 August 2022

      Crypto breaks the rules. That’s the point

      27 July 2022

      E-mail scams are getting chillingly personal

      17 July 2022
    • Podcasts

      Qush on infosec: why prevention is always better than cure

      11 August 2022

      e4’s Adri Führi on encouraging more women into tech careers

      10 August 2022

      How South Africa can woo more women into tech

      4 August 2022

      Book and check-in via WhatsApp? FlySafair is on it

      28 July 2022

      Interview: Why Dell’s next-gen PowerEdge servers change the game

      28 July 2022
    • Opinion

      No reason South Africa should have a shortage of electricity: Ramaphosa

      11 July 2022

      Ntshavheni’s bias against the private sector

      8 July 2022

      South Africa can no longer rely on Eskom alone

      4 July 2022

      Has South Africa’s advertising industry lost its way?

      21 June 2022

      Rob Lith: What Icasa’s spectrum auction means for SA companies

      13 June 2022
    • Company Hubs
      • 1-grid
      • Africa Data Centres
      • Altron Document Solutions
      • Amplitude
      • Atvance Intellect
      • Axiz
      • BOATech
      • CallMiner
      • Digital Generation
      • E4
      • ESET
      • Euphoria Telecom
      • IBM
      • Kyocera Document Solutions
      • Microsoft
      • Nutanix
      • One Trust
      • Pinnacle
      • Skybox Security
      • SkyWire
      • Tarsus on Demand
      • Videri Digital
      • Zendesk
    • Sections
      • Banking
      • Broadcasting and Media
      • Cloud computing
      • Consumer electronics
      • Cryptocurrencies
      • Education and skills
      • Energy
      • Fintech
      • Information security
      • Internet and connectivity
      • Internet of Things
      • Investment
      • IT services
      • Motoring and transport
      • Public sector
      • Science
      • Social media
      • Talent and leadership
      • Telecoms
    • Advertise
    TechCentralTechCentral
    Home»Sections»Entertainment and reviews»Rockstar Games cleaned up its toxic culture – and Grand Theft Auto, too

    Rockstar Games cleaned up its toxic culture – and Grand Theft Auto, too

    Entertainment and reviews By Agency Staff28 July 2022
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email

    In the US summer of 2020, after a police officer killed George Floyd, Rockstar Games quietly shelved a mode of play it had planned to release for its Grand Theft Auto Online game.

    Called Cops ‘n’ Crooks, the mode was a twist on the children’s game where players organise into teams of good guys and bad guys, but seemed especially tone-deaf during the global reckoning over police violence. Senior executives at the company, concerned about how the narrative might be interpreted during a time of heightened scepticism and mistrust of American police, put it aside. They still haven’t made plans to bring it back, according to people familiar with development.

    This was one of several politically sensitive actions Rockstar, a division of Take-Two Interactive Software, has taken in recent years. The company removed transphobic jokes from the most recent console release of Grand Theft Auto V and significantly narrowed its gender pay gap. Rockstar’s next game, Grand Theft Auto VI, will include a playable female protagonist for the first time, according to people familiar with the game. The woman, who is Latina, will be one of a pair of leading characters in a story influenced by the bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde, the people said. Developers are also being cautious not to “punch down” by making jokes about marginalised groups, the people said, in contrast to previous games.

    Grand Theft Auto V, which came out in 2013, is the most profitable entertainment property of all time

    Moves like these once seemed unthinkable for a company whose bestselling franchise is a satirical depiction of America that involves playing gangsters who kill civilians and where women are mostly depicted as sex objects. Grand Theft Auto V was a nihilistic parody that threw insults at everything, from right-wing radio hosts to liberal politicians. Inside the company, the tone wasn’t much different. Rockstar employees described a workplace culture full of drinking, brawling and excursions to strip clubs. The company was an early symbol of an industry-wide problem of long hours at the office, known as crunch, in which staff were expected to be at their desks many nights and weekends in order to keep a game on schedule.

    That strategy was financially successful and turned Grand Theft Auto V into the second-best-selling game of all time, with 165 million copies sold. It also led to burnout, attrition and a public controversy in 2018 that prompted hundreds of Rockstar employees to speak out about the difficult work environment.

    ‘A real company’

    Since that outcry, Rockstar has attempted to reinvent itself as a more progressive and compassionate workplace, according to interviews with more than 20 people who work there or left recently, all of whom requested anonymity because they weren’t authorised to speak publicly. One employee described it as “a boys’ club transformed into a real company”. A spokesman for Rockstar declined to comment.

    Can a kinder, gentler Rockstar still produce the chart-topping calibre of game the studio has become known for? Some employees aren’t sure. Morale across the company is higher than it’s ever been, according to many staffers. But the development of Grand Theft Auto VI has been slower than impatient fans and even longtime employees have expected.

    Much of that has to do with the pandemic, but the delay is also due to some of the changes that the company implemented in an effort to improve working conditions, such as a restructuring of the design department and a pledge to keep overtime under control. Some workers say they’re still trying to figure out how to make games at this new iteration of Rockstar and wonder even what a Grand Theft Auto game looks like in today’s environment. Besides, several Rockstar employees pointed out that you can’t really satirise today’s America — it’s already a satire of itself.

    Between the company’s new mandate and the 2019 departure of Dan Houser, who led creative direction on many previous Rockstar games, all signs suggest Grand Theft Auto VI will feel very different than its predecessor.

    ​​​​​Rockstar Games was founded in 1998 by a handful of British game makers as a subsidiary of Take-Two. With 2001’s Grand Theft Auto III and its sequels, the company revolutionised open-world video games and grew to employ thousands of people, with offices in California, New York, across the UK and beyond. Grand Theft Auto products accounted for 31% of Take-Two’s $3.5-billion in total revenue in fiscal 2022, according to company filings.

    The studio was built on a culture of seven-day workweeks, said Jamie King, a founder who left after eight years. But, he said, that sort of culture is “unsustainable”. Games like Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3 required what some employees referred to as “death marches” — months of mandatory 14-hour days and weekends that took a toll on employees’ lives, mental health and sometimes marriages.

    In October 2018, shortly before the release of Red Dead Redemption 2, Houser, one of Rockstar’s founders, said his team had been working “100-hour weeks” to finish the game. The comments, which Houser later walked back, were the tipping point for many employees.

    Similar complaints have rippled through the industry in recent years. Game developers working at Activision Blizzard, Riot Games and Ubisoft Entertainment have all criticised their employers for issues ranging from sexual discrimination to overwork. Activision Blizzard is being sued by the state of California over allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination. While those companies have acknowledged their issues and vowed to change, none has done as much in response to a worker revolt as Rockstar, according to people across the company.

    For the past four years, management has promised that excessive overtime won’t be required for Grand Theft Auto VI

    The transformation of Rockstar includes changes to scheduling, converting contractors to full-time employees and the ouster of several managers that employees saw as abusive or difficult to work with. When the pandemic started, workers received care packages, cloth masks and surprise bonuses. During the protests over the death of George Floyd, a black man who was murdered by police officers, the company said it would match donations to Black Lives Matter charities. Employees have been given new mental health and leave benefits. A new policy called “flexitime” allows staff to immediately take time off for every extra hour they work. And for the past four years, management has promised that excessive overtime won’t be required for Grand Theft Auto VI, one of the most highly anticipated games by fans and investors on the planet.

    Sticking to that pledge has already prompted changes to the game. Original plans for the title, which is code-named Project Americas, were for it to be more vast than any Grand Theft Auto game to date. Early designs called for the inclusion of territories modelled after large swaths of North and South America, according to people familiar with the plans. But the company reeled in those ambitions and cut the main map down to a fictional version of Miami and its surrounding areas.

    Rockstar’s plan is now to continually update the game over time, adding new missions and cities on a regular basis, which the leadership hopes will lead to less crunch during the game’s final months. Still, the game’s world remains large, with more interior locations than previous Grand Theft Auto games, impacting the timeline.

    To help avoid overtime, Rockstar has also added more producers to keep track of schedules, a move that’s mostly been positive, developers said, but one that has also caused bottlenecks. Some employees said they found themselves waiting around to communicate through middlemen or that it felt like multiple people were in charge, leaving them unsure of who should make the final call. Rockstar put in place a new management structure following the departure of former design director Imran Sarwar, who was accused by several employees of bullying and verbal abuse. His position was filled by three other directors, creating what several people described as a “too many cooks” situation where design decisions are frequently left in flux or contradict one another. Some core aspects of the game, such as combat, were still going through changes even as developers expected them to be locked down, employees said. Sarwar didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    Industry analysts anticipate that the next Grand Theft Auto will be out sometime in Take-Two’s 2024 fiscal year, which runs from April 2023 through March 2024, but developers are sceptical. The game has been in development in some form since 2014. Although there are loose schedules in place, people interviewed for this article said they didn’t know of any firm release date and that they expect the game to be at least two years away. Earlier this year, a group of designers quit Rockstar’s Edinburgh office, telling colleagues they were sick of the lack of progress.

    Many others, however, say they’re content to work at a company where there’s little pressure to get a new game out the door. Grand Theft Auto V, which came out in 2013, is the most profitable entertainment property of all time thanks to its multiplayer component, Grand Theft Auto Online. That unprecedented financial success has given Rockstar leeway to make sweeping changes and to take its time on the next project. And, as one staff member pointed out, overhauling Rockstar’s culture could help with retention and recruitment as well as lead to games that are “better for everyone working on them”, and presumably the people playing them, too.  — Jason Schreier, (c) 2022 Bloomberg LP

    Grand Theft Auto Grand Theft Auto 6 Grand Theft Auto VI GTA 6 GTA V GTA VI GTA6 Rockstart Games Take-Two Interactive
    Share. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email
    Previous ArticleApple’s surging stock raises stakes as earnings loom
    Next Article Government to take over part of Eskom’s R396-billion debt

    Related Posts

    MTN hires outgoing Icasa CEO Willington Ngwepe into top role

    16 August 2022

    Rain in embarrassing climbdown over Telkom statement

    16 August 2022

    Jo’burg to issue RFP for 500MW of electricity ‘within weeks’

    16 August 2022
    Promoted

    HPE SimpliVity: addressing SMBs’ data conundrums

    16 August 2022

    Digital transformation – don’t get caught unprepared

    16 August 2022

    Seven reasons your business needs IP surveillance cameras

    15 August 2022
    Opinion

    No reason South Africa should have a shortage of electricity: Ramaphosa

    11 July 2022

    Ntshavheni’s bias against the private sector

    8 July 2022

    South Africa can no longer rely on Eskom alone

    4 July 2022

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    © 2009 - 2022 NewsCentral Media

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.