Prior to the release ofRed Dead Redemption 2,numerous stories surfaced about the crunch culture at Rockstar Games. Developers shared their own personal experience at the studio, claiming that the environment was anything but healthy. Rockstar tried to put out the PR fire as best it could byallowing developers to speak out on social media, but it didn’t seem to do any good.
Now thatRed Dead Redemption 2has been released and reviews are very strong the discussion about crunch has died down. However, those who worked at Rockstar Games still want players to know that things were less than ideal. In fact, one developer even snuck a clever dig at Rockstar into the game via a weapon description.
Anytime that players go to buy a weapon they can browse the catalog. Rockstar has put a lot of detail into these catalogs – populating them with ads for other products and involved descriptions for the items available.Red Dead Redemption 2’s dedication to realism extends well beyondhorse physicsand lighting – even the process of buying weapons has layers and layers of detail, including a little flavor text. For the Cattleman Revolver, however, the description features a little meta commentary.
While it’s possible that this description was included on its own and has no relation toRockstar Games’ work conditions, the coincidence is a little too perfect not to recognize. The use of “tireless hours each week” and “for little pay” has a lot of parallels with the stories coming out about Rockstar’s work conditions, which have included long hours and overtime to get Red Dead Redemption 2 finished.
At the very least, the sneaky dev acknowledges that the other team members have delivered the “finest” product in the field today.Reviews forRed Dead 2have been nothing short of glowing, with the game matching Rockstar’s highest Metacritic score.
It will be interesting to see if a future patch removes or changes the description, or if Rockstar chooses to leave it in. The crunch culture and harsh work environment stories certainly forced gamers to consider the health of the people that deliver their favorite games but it didn’t seem to hurt the game’s popularity.
Red Dead Redemption 2is out now for PS4 and Xbox One.
