While he isn’t working on Red Dead Redemption 2 and hasn’t worked for Rockstar since 2009, Orpheus Self-Care Entertainment co-founder and COO Job J. Stauffer claims similar practices were in place at the studio during the development of Grand Theft Auto 4. Much of the “crunch,” a term commonly thrown around at game studios as they near development deadlines, Stauffer claims, was attributed to the examples put in place by both Dan Houser and his brother, Sam.
While Stauffer did state it’s been a while since he left the company, Josh Mattyasovszky, who left Rockstar more recently in 2016, echoed the same concerns while working on GTA Online, which may be considered more significant given the continuous DLC the online multiplayer continues to receive.
Seeing the responses from former developers at the studio give context to not only the reason for the recent out-pour for studios to stop overworking staff, but also makes sense as to why Rockstar and Grand Theft Auto Online are the massive, constant success they have been for the past five years. Similar stories have also surfaced following the sudden closure of Telltale Games a few weeks ago, with recently laid off employees recalling work weeks surpassing 60 or 70 hours on a regular basis without overtime pay.
With details about the size and scope of the upcoming Red Dead Redemption 2, it doesn’t appear much has changed since Stauffer and Mattyasovszky parted ways with the company. Rockstar’s release of Red Dead Redemption 2 will be one of the largest games this generation in terms of memory size, requiring over 100 GB of memory on PS4, and just under the same amount for Xbox One. The size of the game is large enough that physical copies will be releasing on two separate Blu-Ray discs, while the pre-load date is set a week ahead of launch, rather than the standard 48 hours for other pending releases.
Red Dead Redemption 2 will release on October 26th for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Source: Gamesindustry.biz
