Now that Red Dead Redemption 2 has 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 beyond horse physics and 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 to Rockstar 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 in order 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 for Red Dead 2 have 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 2 is out now for PS4 and Xbox One.
Source: obzendf
