Rockstar Games Responds to 100-Hour Work Week Backlash

It’s no secret that development teams go into serious crunch-mode leading up to launch of their game. Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar Games, re-ignited this discussion over the weekend when he suggested in an interview with Vulture that Rockstar’s dev team was “working 100-hour weeks” many times throughout 2018 to put the finishing touches on Red Dead Redemption 2. Houser goes on to say the end-product of all this hard work is “this seamless, natural-feeling experience in a world that appear real, an interactive homage to the American rural experience.” Despite Houser’s praise of Red Dead Redemption 2, his comments quickly sparked backlash among gamers and the industry as a whole.

Houser has now clarified his comments, saying the 100-hour work week was actually in reference to only four people at Rockstar, himself included. “The point I was trying to make in the article was related to how the narrative and dialogue in the game was crafted, which was mostly what we talked about, not about the different processes of the wider team,” Houser explained in an email to Variety.  “We obviously don’t expect anyone else to work this way.”

Red Dead Redemption 2 is out on October 26 for PS4 and Xbox One.