Rockstar Employees Badly Overworked, Say Wives [Slashdot]

[DP ServBot]

juicegg writes "Wives of Rockstar Games employees in San Diego recently published an open letter on their Gamasutra blog. The authors say that Rockstar employees are seriously strained by unending crunch periods of 12-hour work days and 6-day weeks. High levels of stress are leading to serious psychological and physical problems for some of the employees. They charge that studio management uses arbitrary, deceptive and manipulative practices to get employees to work more unpaid overtime hours at greater intensity — despite over $1 billion in Grand Theft Auto revenue. Among the blog comments, some current and past Rockstar employees are confirming problems with the studio. 'Ex Rocker' writes: 'What makes R* crunch periods different then any other studio is that they tell you the game has to be finished in 6 months, so let's start our final push to get this awesome game out there! 6 months turns into 1 year, 1 year turns into 2.' Other comments reveal worker hopelessness and general mismanagement at the San Diego studio. This turmoil is affecting development on upcoming games as well." Read on for responses from Rockstar itself and other members of the industry.http://games.slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rss&op=image&style=h0&sid=10/01/23/177206 (http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/01/23/177206/Rockstar-Employees-Badly-Overworked-Say-Wives?from=rss)
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[Guru of Time and Space]

That's capitalism for you.

-GoTaS

[LaughingMAN.S9]

....so quit.

[kupomogli]

I also heard voice actors for GTA4 got paid almost nothing.

[SegaAges]

That sounds like working for most software companies out there.

When I am working on a big project, the same thing happens to me.

They also did not say what happens during the slower periods, which every single company has as well. I have worked the 12-16 hour work days for 6 or 7 days, and then once one of the big projects is done, then the team sits around for awhile and doing minimal work.

Working at R* sound like it is close to the same.

Welcome to the world of being a programmer, and it sounds strange coming from me since I am new in the industry, but it sounds like mnay companies do this

[vectrexer]

Time to take it up with the labor board?? (http://www.dir.ca.gov/DLSE/)

They can be surprisingly helpful in getting unpaid overtime paid out on a retroactive basis. I know of a case where a company has to search back over three years for all current and past employees so they could be paid off on when some might think is a minor amount of overtime. A minor amount that added up over the years.

[gepeto]

How much does voice acting usually pay?

[Shadow Kisuragi]

Welcome to the world of being a programmer, and it sounds strange coming from me since I am new in the industry, but it sounds like mnay companies do this

"Crunch time" is normal. However, overtime is paid out, even for salaried employees, and work-life balance is often monitored closely. I work for a company that was sued for this very same practice, and now our studio is rated #1 Business in the area for Working Families.

As for voice acting costs, it depends on a number of variables: number of lines, amount of time spent recording, whether they're union or not, the actual talent doing the VO, &c.

[skaar]

Welcome to the industry.

[Gameguy]

It's too big to post here, so here's the link instead.

http://www.spaceavalanche.com/2009/08/24/office-job/

[Icarus Moonsight]

If they want their workers to be more productive, and all this in the open letter is true, then that is very much the wrong way to go about it. Someone needs new management.

[tomwaits]

Sounds like every project that I've worked on too. That's just the way the industry goes... deadlines + creative projects = no personal life. SegaAges is right about the downtime though. Once it 'goes gold' the pressure is off, briefly.

More than 6 months of crunch time sounds like poor management though. The deadline is known and managers should be able to start cutting parts of the project if it looks like it won't be finished within six months. Also, when key people quit during crunch time, that REALLY sucks for everyone else.

[Nebagram]

I work in a job centre in a city where Rockstar operate one of their testing offices, and ironically whilst training to use the job search system one of the first things that came up was one for a game tester at that very office. Hours of 40-50 per week, no bonuses. The pay? 12 grand a year. Everybody in my training group loves GTA and we all collectively went 'fuck that' upon seeing it. That they had to advertise the job at all in this recession says a lot, I should think.

[Ed Oscuro]

Serious case of deja vu here. Does anybody else remember the previous time the "wives" of developers brought their complaints to the media? Maybe it wasn't R* but it was another US developer if memory serves.

And yeah, sounds like par for the course, unfortunately.

[j_factor]

Serious case of deja vu here. Does anybody else remember the previous time the "wives" of developers brought their complaints to the media? Maybe it wasn't R* but it was another US developer if memory serves.

That was EA.

In any case, long hours are normal, but unpaid overtime is never okay.

[heybtbm]

unending crunch periods of 12-hour work days and 6-day weeks.

Welcome to the professional world. We all have to do it from time to time.

[RJ]

Ummm, that's not true.