14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this week, rumors begun to spread concerning Rockstar San Diego's working policies, as Gamasutra posted on its blog section the letter of a concerned spouse. Claiming to be the wife of a Rockstar SD employee, she accused the studio of forcing its employees to undergo a brutal work schedule, with working six days a week, of sometimes over 12 hours and constantly lying about deadlines. The blog post received many comments from people claiming to have inside dealing with the studio, and they all seem to confirm this rumor.
The game in question is Dead Red Redemption, and it's due for release on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on April 27, and, from what it foretells at the moment, all the effort the employees are putting in it could be a huge waste of time. But, as the working-condition rumors seem to be accurate, the Independent Game Developers Association got involved in the matter and offered to mediate the situation, extending an open invitation to discussion to Take-Two's management, the studio heads and the employees.
"In any studio, the IGDA finds the practice of undisclosed and constant overtime to be deceptive, exploitative, and ultimately harmful not only to developers but to their final product and the industry as a whole," IGDA stated. "While our research shows that many studios have found ways to preserve quality of life for their employees, unhealthy practices are still far too common in our industry." And with the industry still licking its wounds from last year's downfall, we can definitely expect developers to be pushed to the breaking point.
Still, according to an IGDA survey performed in 2009, the Quality of Life Survey, the organization found out that, while more than half of the questioned developers would desire additional time off, most of them believed that the studios where they worked did their best to avoid overworking the developers. "While crunch has always been a concern for the games industry, the IGDA concludes from its research that conditions in most workplaces are improving and, with diligence and an emphasis on increasing process efficiency, can continue to do so," the IGDA added. While Rockstar has yet to make any comment on the subject, hopefully, the "Rockstar Spouse" matter will soon be officially addressed by the company.