What’s Going On At Rockstar?

Rockstar Games, the studio best-known for producing the crime-and-occasional-story series Grand Theft Auto as well as school-and-vandalism game Bully and race-fast-cars game Midnight Club is in the centre of a storm of controversy about working conditions. On the 7th of January, an anonymous blogger or group of bloggers posted up a letter of complaint on a user blog on game development site Gamersutra, alledging that the employees of Rockstar San Diego are experiencing degrading and unfair working conditions. The post was signed “Determined Devoted Wives of San Diego Employees”, and its claims were reinforced by a former Rockstar Employee over at MTV Multiplayer. Rockstar itself has responded on their official website.

The really long letter claims that Rockstar San Diego employees have suffered ‘degredation’ that ‘extends to their quality of life and their family members’ in the form of mandatory 12-hour days, six days a week. They’ve also had their pay cut and their vacation time limited. Allegedly, the stress is so great it is severely affecting their health, with at least one employee diagnosed with depressive symptoms and another with suicidal tendancies. The Wives say that these working conditions are the fault of Rockstar San Diego’s Managment and ‘thirst for power’, and say that “if these working condition stay unchanged in the upcoming weeks, preperations will be made to take legal action against Rockstar San Diego”.

That said, it is easy to say things on the Internet under the guise of anonymity. It is, after all, the internet. However, a string of comments on the initial blog and elsewhere support these claims, as do some sources actually inside Rockstar San Diego, according to Joystiq. MTV Multiplayer also talked to an ex-staffer from Rockstar New York, who spoke about the lack of direction that Rockstar New York would give to its development studios, only to jump in at the last minute and suddenly start to pay attention. This attention apparently consisted of major changes out of the blue, ‘as opposed to other studios where there are regular meetings and milestones and stuff so you don’t get too far a path before people come in to make sweeping changes’. In this way, the source explained, Rockstar NY was a lot like the Eye of Sauron.

Rockstar’s PR department response for a week or two was a terse “Rockstar Games Does Not Comment on Rumours or Speculation”, or even better, silence (although their wallpaper department apparently had some fun with that comment). But a few days ago they broke their silence - not through an official press release, but in their occasional “Asked and Answered” column in response to a couple of fan questions. Rockstar stated:

As for the stories spreading around the internet, yes we have noticed them. Unfortunately, this is a case of people taking the opinions of a few anonymous posters on message boards as fact. No business is ever perfect, but Rockstar Games is a tight knit team made up of around 900 supremely talented and motivated professionals, many of whom have worked here for a very long time. We’re saddened if any former members of any studio did not find their time here enjoyable or creatively fulfilling and wish them well with finding an environment more suitable to their temperaments and needs, but the vast majority of our company are focused solely on delivering cutting edge interactive entertainment. We’ve always cared passionately about the people working here, and have always tried to maintain a supportive creative environment. There is simply no way Rockstar could continue to produce such large scale, high quality games without this. That being said, making great games is very challenging, which is why we have and will continue to try to keep hold of some of the best talent in the industry and support them in every way we can.

If you can wrap your mind around the wording, you might have noticed that the response doesn’t actually deny any of the claims about current employees - and it very conveniently leaves out the fact that in April of 2009, Rockstar Games settled out of court with “over 100″ ex-San Diego employees for about $2.75 Million in a battle over unpaid overtime. Admittedly, Rockstar denied any wrong-doing or liability and claimed that they paid only because further litigation “would be protracted and expensive for all parties”, but to pay out nearly $3 Million in compensation?

Some posters argue that this kind of ‘crunch time’ is unfortunately common in the gaming industry as a whole, and even that it’s a kind of price you pay for working in a top-tier development studio. Others say that such prolonged working conditions are morally reprehensible, and possibly even illegal. Either way, Rockstar doesn’t seem overly concerned about it, if their lack of denial and their ‘hilarious’ wallpaper are their official response.