GTA 6 Gamers Horrified To Learn of 'Brutal' Bully Development Process

With Grand Theft Auto VI’s release looming, many are concerned that Rockstar Games’ history of “crunch” may rear its ugly head once more, especially following one ex-employee’s recent interview regarding the development of their 2006 cult-classic Bully.

Video games take a long time to develop, especially these days. The ever-increasing focus on graphical fidelity has stretched out development times, resulting in games taking years longer than they would have last decade.

However, that’s not the only reason development times have increased. A mere decade ago, development crunch time was far more normalised– and nobody loved forcing their developers to work long hours more than Rockstar Games.

Not long after the release of Red Dead Redemption II, Rockstar Games was heavily criticised in the media for its obsession with forcing its developers to work long, unpaid hours, following Dan Houser's interview with the New York Times in which he bragged of "100-hour weeks".

The push back was immediate and well-deserved. As detailed in an article by Jason Schreier on Kotaku, Rockstar Games immediately went into PR overdrive in an attempt to quell the negativity.

Rockstar Games’ reliance on crunch was an open secret at the time, but the Red Dead Redemption II controversy supposedly forced them to finally change their ways.

At least… that’s what we’ve been led to believe. As GTA VI’s release date nears, it’s hard to forget how Rockstar Games treated their employees in the past, especially now that new details regarding Bully’s development have come to light.

As detailed by GamesRadar's Anthony McGlynn (via Retro Gamer Magazine), Bully’s Environment Artist Andrew Wood shared his experiences working on the game, and the lengths to which Rockstar Games went to in a bid to get the game out on time.

“The memories of it are love-hate. It was a fun, weird, hellish, chaotic, awesome time… I reflect back fondly on the people and the times and the crazy things we did after hours, but then I think about the stress”, Wood revealed.

“There were constant internal conflicts due to the stress of always being at work. A couple of people had mental breakdowns. They snapped…. When we were pushing to release the game, we were revoked our lunch and our dinner breaks. They actually catered food into the office because they didn't want us leaving! It started to feel like a prison for a lot of people.”

“It was brutal at times, especially near the end. We were working seven days a week, averaging 18-hour days… It just burned people out. We had a lot of turnover, but I decided to stay because I just knew the project was going to be something special.”

Just some quick maths if you’re feeling lazy: seven days a week, 18 hours a day equals about 126 hours per week. Pretty heinous stuff, to say the least.

Hopefully, this is a thing of the past, not that it retroactively excuses said practices. We’re all looking forward to GTA VI, but that enjoyment shouldn’t come at the cost of the well-being of the people behind the scenes.

I will gladly wait until 2036 if it means that the people working on the game are treated ethically. The welfare of the humans who create the games we play should never be sacrificed for them, full stop.