GTA 6 devs reportedly worried over crunch amid Rockstar's return to office call

As GTA 6 prepares for release, Rockstar employees appear dissatisfied with the company's return to office policy. Last month, it was revealed that Rockstar Games is changing its work environment and employees have been instructed to work from the office five days a week starting April 15, 2024. This was reportedly done to address productivity and security concerns, but the move has raised concerns among Rockstar developers regarding the return of crunch culture to the company.

An independent video games news website, Aftermath, conducted anonymous interviews with a number of Rockstar Games employees following this announcement. They had a lot to say about this return to office decision and it seems like it could affect the development of GTA 6.

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GTA 6 employees concerned over imminent crunch after Rockstar's return to office policy

After the GTA 6 developers mandated a return to office directive, some UK-based Rockstar Games employees, in collaboration with the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB), voiced their opposition to this directive. They were concerned that it would unnecessarily disrupt work-life balance, which might eventually lead to bigger issues for some of them. According to an IWGB statement made by an anonymous Rockstar employee:

"Working from home has been a lifeline for many of us at Rockstar, allowing us to balance care responsibilities, manage disabilities, and relocate as we need. Now, Rockstar is snatching away that lifeline without a second thought for the workers who’ll be impacted most."

In a new interview with Aftermath, two more Rockstar Games employees said that not much has changed since IWGB voiced concerns over the GTA 6 developer's return to office call last month. As one employee explained to the independent video games news website:

"The only news I know of is some reports of some people being admonished to varying degrees for voicing disagreement with the RTO plan, but otherwise we are just waiting for more information from management about how the hell this is going to work."

Bloomberg's Jason Schreier revealed that Rockstar's return to office call was made citing security concerns, which was assumed to be due to the massive GTA 6 leaks. However, this is what one of the anonymous Rockstar employees had to say about leaks:

"We've historically had leaks regardless of what setup we had. Back with [Red Dead Redemption 2] we had leaks around the launch of that game. It's never going to be 100 percent fully secure. People will be motivated to leak our content because there's a great deal of interest in the products that we make."

They also stated that there are misconceptions about the impact of working from home on productivity. They cited the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of GTA 5 as an example of a successful project that was completed almost entirely remotely.

Regarding concerns about returning to the crunch culture that Rockstar became notorious for, one employee said:

"We're concerned about going back to that. I've been through a couple of projects, both of which had crunch. The first one was extremely difficult. I had way less gray hair back then. We want to continue the strides we've made as a company to remove that toxic culture."

In the meantime, a report by Kotaku claims that GTA 6 might get delayed as a result of this return-to-office call. The report suggests that the game might get pushed back to late 2025 or even 2026 due to this mandate by Rockstar.