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  1. #1
    Take the fcking keys away baseline bum's Avatar
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    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...loyee-backlash
    Rockstar Games Cleaned Up Its Frat-Boy Culture — and Grand Theft Auto, Too
    With a new tone at the company and a change in creative direction, GTA VI will probably feel very different from its predecessor

    By Jason Schreier
    July 27, 2022 at 7:00 AM CDT

    In the 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 organize 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 skepticism 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 Inc., 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 marginalized groups, the people said, in contrast to previous games.

    Moves like these once seemed unthinkable for a company whose best-selling 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.

    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 authorized 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 caliber 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 satirize 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 revolutionized 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 work weeks, 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 Inc., Riot Games and Ubisoft Entertainment SA have all criticized 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.

    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 le, 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 modeled 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 skeptical. 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.

  2. #2
    LMAO koriwhat's Avatar
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    George Floyd and GTA turning woke like all the other ty companies, games, industries, ect... the "woke"!

  3. #3
    Veteran Xevious's Avatar
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    I'm all for better working conditions for the developers, but hopefully they don't change the tone of the game too much. GTA IV tried that and it sucked. GTA at its best has always been a satire of American culture, and makes fun of everyone equally.

    All that said, Red Dead has a much more serious tone and I prefer those to GTA.

  4. #4
    Take the fcking keys away baseline bum's Avatar
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    I'm all for better working conditions for the developers, but hopefully they don't change the tone of the game too much. GTA IV tried that and it sucked. GTA at its best has always been a satire of American culture, and makes fun of everyone equally.

    All that said, Red Dead has a much more serious tone and I prefer those to GTA.
    Ugh GTA IV was such with Niko always talking about how he wanted to become a good person in the cutscene right after murdering 50 people. Completely wasted that incredible physics engine on that game. GTA V nailed it with Trevor who was like how we all play GTA games.

  5. #5
    TheDrewShow is salty lefty's Avatar
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    Just make another Vice City

    Edit : just realized it's been available for iPad forever
    Last edited by lefty; 07-29-2022 at 07:04 AM.

  6. #6
    coffee's for closers FrostKing's Avatar
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    > "Early designs called for the inclusion of territories modeled 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."


    For the consumer, this is the bottomline. Inferior product.

  7. #7
    coffee's for closers FrostKing's Avatar
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    Headline: bad Frat Boys

    Article: Developers worked their ass off and created greatness


    But we had to "clean it up". Now the non-Frattys have superior working conditions, longer time table for production and they'll present you with weaker and less.

  8. #8
    🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 ElNono's Avatar
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    Now that's a female protagonist, hopefully they add abortion clinics and you can go get an abortion whenever you want, tbh

  9. #9
    A neverending cycle Trainwreck2100's Avatar
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    Now that's a female protagonist, hopefully they add abortion clinics and you can go get an abortion whenever you want, tbh
    but what if the female isn't a uterus female but one with a

  10. #10
    🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 ElNono's Avatar
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    but what if the female isn't a uterus female but one with a
    they should have that option too...

  11. #11
    what uganda do about it? Joseph Kony's Avatar
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    George Floyd and GTA turning woke like all the other ty companies, games, industries, ect... the "woke"!
    No one asked for the opinions of a junkie calf tatted dropout in this thread. go back to loading gun magazines in VR you ing got

  12. #12
    Got Woke? DMC's Avatar
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    I'm all for better working conditions for the developers, but hopefully they don't change the tone of the game too much. GTA IV tried that and it sucked. GTA at its best has always been a satire of American culture, and makes fun of everyone equally.

    All that said, Red Dead has a much more serious tone and I prefer those to GTA.
    I can't even be a good guy in RDR. Someone at a card table says something smart ass and I kill everyone in the place and rob them.

  13. #13
    Take the fcking keys away baseline bum's Avatar
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    I can't even be a good guy in RDR. Someone at a card table says something smart ass and I kill everyone in the place and rob them.
    I killed everyone who talked in RDR2 but still mostly had my honor maxed in the game

  14. #14
    Savvy Veteran spurraider21's Avatar
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  15. #15
    LMAO koriwhat's Avatar
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    Lol No one gives a about JK as well...

    Too bad he's not at the card table too in RDR2. Bummer...

  16. #16
    CDs Nuts. resistanze's Avatar
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    Now that's a female protagonist, hopefully they add abortion clinics and you can go get an abortion whenever you want, tbh

  17. #17
    Got Woke? DMC's Avatar
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    Now that's a female protagonist, hopefully they add abortion clinics and you can go get an abortion whenever you want, tbh
    Or bomb one, that would appease both sides.

  18. #18
    🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 ElNono's Avatar
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    Or bomb one, that would appease both sides.
    It would, but they’ll lose about half of their employees. That’s a great way to downsize in Silicon Valley today.

  19. #19
    LMAO koriwhat's Avatar
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    It would, but they’ll lose about half of their employees. That’s a great way to downsize in Silicon Valley today.
    Good no more H1B visas!

  20. #20
    Got Woke? DMC's Avatar
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    Good no more H1B visas!
    It's about time to upgrade to H2B or H1C.

  21. #21
    🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 ElNono's Avatar
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    Good no more H1B visas!
    Rockstar North (formerly DMA Design), which makes the GTA series, is based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

    Only 2 out of the 9 Rockstar studios are in the US: Rockstar Massachusetts (Bully) and Rockstar San Diego (RDR)

  22. #22
    LMAO koriwhat's Avatar
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    Rockstar North (formerly DMA Design), which makes the GTA series, is based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

    Only 2 out of the 9 Rockstar studios are in the US: Rockstar Massachusetts (Bully) and Rockstar San Diego (RDR)
    It's called sarcasm bro. I don't care either way as long as we stop hiring all them Indians just in order to bug me 20-30 times a day with their bs schemes.

    Jesus you people take everything to heart and feel the need to "correct" everyone. It's odd but do you bro.

  23. #23
    🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 ElNono's Avatar
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    It's called sarcasm bro. I don't care either way as long as we stop hiring all them Indians just in order to bug me 20-30 times a day with their bs schemes.

    Jesus you people take everything to heart and feel the need to "correct" everyone. It's odd but do you bro.
    Hard to tell when conservatives are 'lol jest kiddin' these days, tbh...

  24. #24
    LMAO koriwhat's Avatar
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    Hard to tell when conservatives are 'lol jest kiddin' these days, tbh...
    Who's a conservative exactly?

  25. #25
    🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 ElNono's Avatar
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    Who's a conservative exactly?
    You without a doubt. Not that there's anything wrong with that, tbh...

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