"That's unacceptable": Red Dead Redemption dev says crunch at Rocksta…

Kris Roberts worked at Rockstar for years, first tuning the vehicles for the Midnight Club games and then leading the design of Red Dead Redemption's multiplayer modes. He says the final six months of development on Rockstar's cowboy epic was the worst period of crunch he's experienced in the game industry, and he argues that the overtime wasn't even really about making the game better. Instead, it was about putting on a show for executives.

With his transition from Midnight Club to Red Dead Redemption, Roberts went from an hourly employee to a "full-time" dev working what Rockstar called "core hours," as he explains in a new interview with Kiwi Talks on YouTube. "There was the expectation that you'll be there by 9:30 and we're going to stay until 6:00. If you're staying after that, there's dinner available and blah blah blah."

But those expectations changed over time. "Eventually core hours expanded to include half days on Saturday, where you were expected to be there," Roberts continues. "Then core hours expanded to be full days on Saturdays. Then Sunday was 'optional,' but encouraged. By the end, we were working every day, all day." esporist.com

Roberts describes the last six months of work on Red Dead Redemption as a "blur," alluding to the delirious effects of sleep deprivation. "You end up in an amnesiac state where you probably don't have clear recollection or memory of exactly what was going on," he says.

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Rockstar's history of crunch goes back years, and it became a matter of public debate around the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 – a debate the company responded to with testimonials from employees suggesting that things weren't actually so bad. But even now, allegations of overwork continue, and protections against crunch are a key point among the employees attempting to unionize at Rockstar.

For his part, Roberts feels "conflicted" about airing these old frustrations, in part because he pushed himself into "self-directed" crunch on Midnight Club. "I was doing that because I thought it was important or I wanted to be involved at that level and it was me doing it," he says.

But things were different with Red Dead Redemption, and Roberts is particularly frustrated by "artificial" incidents where Rockstar would declare "all hands on deck" overtime during weekend visits from executives like Sam Houser and Leslie Benzies.

"I remember a couple specific examples of a Friday afternoon, [when] management would send out an email that said, 'Just so we're all clear, we need to be here this weekend.' Then a follow-up email would say, 'And this weekend doesn't just mean Saturday.' I've made promises to my kids about what we're going to do this weekend. and Friday afternoon at 4:30 you're telling me I need to be here on Sunday regardless of what's going on. That's unacceptable," Roberts says.

"And it wasn't because, 'Oh, if you have a certain number of issues in Bugstar, or 'If you have critical things that must be fixed before the next build,' or 'If you have a legitimate business case for putting in that weekend time then we want you to be here.' It was more like, 'No, we need to put on the show of appearance that everybody's here all the time, because we have an executive visiting or something."

As multiplayer design lead, Roberts was then tasked with communicating these expectations to his team. This was a part of why he eventually said "I don't want to do this" and chose to leave the studio. "It was certainly in the top four" reasons for moving on, he jokes.

So, and you know there was the punchline for me of okay the expectation is I go to my team and tell my designers and people that you know okay we need to be here Sunday and it's like that was so challenging for me and that you know I think really was a component of what sort of pushed it over the edge for me as far as like I don't want to do this I mean whatever

"Don’t boycott GTA 6," fired Rockstar devs say: "Support our legal battle instead" and "win justice for the people who helped make it."

A pair of clips purportedly showing Grand Theft Auto 6 gameplay footage have appeared online, along with several images of an in-game map of Leonida, the Florida-inspired state where GTA 6 takes place.

Rockstar has not confirmed whether or not the clips are genuine, but they look legit to our eyes, with the caveat that even if they are, they could come from an outdated build of the game. Both clips look like the kind of thing a tester would capture, in that they're relatively mundane gameplay scenes, not the type of stuff you'd see in a trailer.

In both clips, the player is controlling Jason, one of GTA 6's two protagonists. In one clip, the player shoots a basketball outside Jason's dilapidated waterfront home. In the other, their car gets clipped by a delivery truck, and then they go full road rage homicide on the poor delivery driver before scrambling to get away from incoming police. The clip ends just as the player drives up to a helicopter that looks ripe for stealing.

The clips are circulating through the usual social media channels, and some reuploads have already been taken down. We're not posting them here, but they're out there for the curious to find.

With the caveat again that we don't know the exact provenance or recency of these clips—a group called "Cyberleek" has taken credit for posting them—we've picked out the most notable details here. Our first official look at GTA 6 gameplay is scheduled to arrive next week, first on Netflix.

Wanted level

The wanted level can reach six stars: that's one more than in GTA 5! It appears beating a delivery driver to death with a pipe wrench will get you a mere two stars.

Police ID

When you commit a crime and the cops are after you, they ID you with three categories, as seen in the top right corner of the screen: your clothing (an icon shows a hanger), possibly your face or hair color (shown with a blank face icon), and your car (a car icon). Presumably changing your clothing or car (or repainting it as in other GTA games) while wanted can help you escape.

Stamina

From the moment Jason starts throwing punches at that angry delivery driver what appears to be a stamina meter starts depleting. When he starts beating him to death with a wrench, the stamina depletes all the way to zero. The edges of the screen start to vignette, and I'd wager no stamina means some sort of movement penalty.

Stealth

The cops pull up after Jason beats the Scoop driver to death, and we see something new to GTA here: a blue stealth indicator arrow that tracks how close the cops are to noticing the player. Based on how brazen the player is being, the time it takes to fully alert law enforcement seems pretty generous—maybe you can play GTA 6 stealthily, if you choose?

Focus

It looks like we'll be improving the traits of Jason and Lucia just like we did with Arthur Morgan in RDR2. We see Jason sink a basketball and gain +2% Focus. Called shot, but I'm guessing that trait has something to do with slo-mo bullet time.

Hoops

Speaking of basketball, when Jason is shooting hoops in his driveway, he uses a simple "press the button when the rings overlap" system.

Negative karma

GTA 6 might judge you for your actions in a similar way to Red Dead Redemption 2's karma system. As Jason pummels the delivery driver, we see a little devil icon on the right with a minus symbol. Sure looks like the evil side of a karma system. Interestingly, the symbol doesn't appear until he starts beating the unconscious man—perhaps the game won't judge you for starting fights with locals, but it will for senseless murder?

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Cars have a gas and engine meter

Fill 'er up! Looks like you'll need to monitor your vehicle's gas level (a popular mod for GTA 5 lets you do this, so I guess Rockstar incorporated it fully into GTA 6) and engine condition. The trunk and bed of the car also shows "loadout" and "storage 0/4" menu options.

Money and budget

In the hoops clip, we see Jason has two dollar amounts shown in the upper right corner: $39 (presumably his cash on hand) and $1,643 next to a house icon. The circle around the house is filled only a tiny bit, so that could indicate that he's got rent due, or perhaps that's how much money he's got stashed in the bank (similar to how it works in GTA Online).

Fake brands spotted

Sea Shark (jetski), Scoop (delivery company), 24/7 Supermarket, Arrow (gas station), Hamilton Private Health Clinic (last word is blurry, but "clinic" fits), Fast Pass EMS (on an ambulance).

Tunes

The song in the second clip is Impact by SG Lewis, Robin, and Channel Tres—pretty apropos for slamming a car into a delivery truck. You can listen to it on YouTube.

Player character locations shown

The map image leak shows a car icon with a "J" over it. It appears this image was taken while the player was inhabiting Lucia (the arrow indicating the player location is over the water, so Lucia might be on a boat or aircraft), and the map shows the location of Jason elsewhere in Leonida. This is a change from GTA 5, where you didn't know where the other playable characters were on the map unless you swapped into them or happened to run into them.

Racetracks

The map leak shows what looks like several small race tracks across Leonida: racing cars could be an activity or a way to make money.

Jason's house location

Jason's house is shown on the map, too: it's in southern Leonida on one of the islands of the Keys.

Military base

I'm wondering if the airport shown at the very end of the Keys is the military base. There's a large airport shown in Vice City, so this smaller airport could be the place to steal fighter jets: though it'd be quite a long drive if you wanted to take a tank into downtown Vice City.