To say that the next title in the Grand Theft Auto saga is highly anticipated would be an understatement.
Scheduled for 2025, development of the game is entering its final phase.
The pressure is therefore mounting for Rockstar Games, the creator of the game, which has asked all of its employees to return to the office face-to-face five days a week, and therefore to avoid teleworking.
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The new rule should apply from April, specifies an internal email consulted by Bloomberg.
“Making these changes now puts us in the best position to deliver the next Grand Theft Auto with the level of quality and polish it requires, along with a release roadmap that matches the scale and ambition of the game
,” writes Jennifer Kolbe, head of publishing at Rockstar Games.
The company has also found
“tangible benefits”
to in-person work, the email said.
This, both for questions of productivity... but also for cybersecurity issues.
Because the project was the victim of numerous leaks.
In December, a teenage member of the hacker group Lapsus$ was convicted of blackmailing developers.
The young man had threatened to disclose the source code of the new part.
The broadcast of the first trailer also had to be brought forward by a few hours due to leaks revealing the very first images of the project.
Dissatisfied employees
In 2018, hundreds of studio employees spoke to the press about the difficult working environment and the pace of meeting tight deadlines.
“It's been almost ten years since I left Rockstar, but I can assure you that at the time of GTA IV, it was like working with a gun to your head 7 days a week,”
declared Job Stauffer, former responsible for the studio's social networks.
The company says efforts have since been made to improve working conditions, such as implementing wellness programs and reevaluating work practices.
This almost total abandonment of teleworking to complete GTA 6 was therefore poorly received by employees.
They accuse Rockstar of
“broken promises”
and warn of the risk of overwork.
Taking advantage of teleworking, some employees have moved far from the studios and today find themselves in a difficult situation, says the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain, which represents video game developers in the United Kingdom.
“One of my concerns is having to work late in the office to stay in touch with international teams, whereas before we could connect from home to attend late meetings
,” says a Rockstar employee quoted by the union.
“This means we won’t be able to spend time with our families
. ”
But the measure also affects employees
“whose health problems prevent them from working full time in the office and who today find themselves in uncertainty
,” says the same testimony.
Also read: With GTA 6, Rockstar hopes to reproduce the extraordinary success of GTA 5
The use of distance learning was essential in development studios during the various confinements, and continued post-Covid at the request of creators.
This practice does not affect the quality of the titles, but it may have slowed down their production.
The studio Insomniac Games thus produced the game Spider-Man 2 with teams mainly remotely, even if it was recently targeted by a major cyberattack.
GTA 6 already promises its share of chases, parties on yachts and heists.
Video game fans are impatiently awaiting it, as the latest opus was released in September 2013. Sold 190 million copies, it generated nearly $8 billion in revenue.
But fans will have to be patient… If this announcement reveals that Rockstar wants to meet deadlines,
“home stretch”
does not mean that the game is ready.
A release in 2025 could mean January... as well as December.