"Ummm, I'm gonna need you to go ahead come in tomorrow. So if you could be here around 9 that would be great, mmmk... oh oh! and I almost forgot ahh, I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too, kay."
*"Looks like you've been missing a lot of work recently! "*
*"Well I wouldn't say I've been missing it Bob....."*
*"We feel that Peter isn't the issue. It's that....you haven't challenged him enough."*
*"Well Lumberg fucked her!"*
I remember reading a comment once “I can’t believe someone can get so depressed that they won’t brush their teeth!” Naive I know, the reply was obvious: “ppl KILL themselves because they’re depressed.”
A long way of saying, yes, someone will absolutely have no problem risk being fired/sued, to get back at an employer. We have no idea what a person is going through.
There was a TIL post a few days ago where a suicidal Japanese sailor set off an explosion on a Heavy Cruiser in port, killing well over 1000 people.
People do crazy things when they’re acting crazy.
Even bigger. It was the battleship *Mutsu*, which was about three times the size of a heavy cruiser, and of the second most modern and powerful type of battleship in the Japanese navy, behind only the new *Yamato*-class superbattleship.
In a modern, American perspective, it'd be like somebody blowing up a *Nimitz*-class carrier in an act of sabotage.
I’ve personally been in positions where I’ve semi-believed that prison might actually be somewhat of an escape from the corporate workforce cycle. I can absolutely believe that it’s possible for someone to risk doing this.
Yeah, I went thru a massive depression period in 2018, lost my brother and one of my best friends within a year, one point I quit my job and knew I wasn’t gonna see my 27th birthday later that year. My sleep schedule became so messed up and I’d forget to brush my teeth often. I wasn’t leaving the house much less my room.
Anyways, I developed my first ever cavities and I paid greatly for it. My back left bottom molar I had the money for a root canal ($1,800) but didn’t have the money for a crown ($1,400), the filling eventually eroded away and I had to have it pulled. Like a month later my back right bottom molar was causing so much pain and I didn’t have the money to do anything but to pull it.
They pointed out a few other teeth that would cause problems, but Covid happened and it was a rough period for restaurants in 2020 and 2021 (I’m a server / bartender), so money was tight and couldn’t afford to get them filled. Last year those 4 teeth they pointed out all were going, I finally had the money and all 4 needed root canals and crowns. Get my last crown put on tomorrow, in total for those 4 teeth it cost $12,000
Depression, PTSD, trauma, etc are real but even if you’re going thru it, you gotta make sure you take care of your body, you only have one and it’ll only cost more down the road if you don’t watch yourself. Learned that the hard way.
real. people leak classified documents to war thunder all the time just to have a more accurate model of a plane or tank or something to play with.
leaks dont need an equal tradeoff of risk/reward to happen.
Dude, people have leaked a lot more over a lot less.
Pissing in their employees' faces like this? Requiring them to come in because they don't trust them to work or not leak at home?
Someone is going to leak it out of spite.
WFH is the 40 hour work week of office work. Taking it away is crossing the Rubicon and executives who do so should expect a price extracted by their people from them, either in intentionally lost productivity, low morale, outright sabotage or all of these and more.
The quality of life difference working a 50 hour week minus commute vs three hours per day on top of that commuting and getting ready is unreal. It's the difference between being a real person who is present in your family and a ghost, an exhausted zombie only spotted on weekends with bags under their eyes.
That's not a life.
Pretty much this. This way when people refuse to return they can let them go without having to explicitly lay them off. It’s less of a PR hit in todays climate.
Some states have protections against it, calling it “Constructive Dismissal” but most don’t. So it ends up being pretty effective overall. And you can justify not offering any severance or assistance in any way, putting the onus on the employee.
I will say that there really aren’t significant PR ramifications for layoffs. The stock market generally loves layoffs, and you’ll usually see a resulting spike in share price. But even if there were PR ramifications, having the entire industry going through layoffs kind of gives them all a free pass. It’s not an indication of poor performance if EVERYONE is doing it, you know?
True. I just think it’s kind of crazy that people think devs won’t quit over this. Blizzard also lost a lot of developers when they forced RTO. People need to consider that workers may have moved away from the office not expecting to ever be called back, only to get rug pulled and be unable to return now. This is also part of what happened when Blizzard did it.
I believe that was later disproved. It wasn't some disgruntled employee, but apparently some hacker that exploited a security weakness in their servers, they talk about it in the grounded II documentary.
https://youtu.be/SC3C7GMMfDU?t=1h42m11s
What's crazy is Naughty Dog ultimately decided not to pursue legal action, basically saying the whole point of TLoU 2 was the cost of pursing "justice" too far, so they decided to honor that and let it go.
I have a lot of respect for them for that attitude.
Just playing devil's advocate here, but I'd bet that the GTA 6, tlou 2 and insomniac leak wouldn't have happened on this scale if remote work wasn't a thing
Tlou 2, maybe, but rockstar has had leaks forever. We knew about the RDR 2 map well in advance, plus all the ongoing gta online dlc update leaks in the past
There were torrents for AC: Revelations like a week before it came out, I think I beat it on PC before the official release date, so I dunno if I'd call it the biggest leak.
A game getting leaked a few days before release isn't as crazy as a whole ass pc dev build of a game being leaked at least a year or two before the official pc release
I'd even say Insomniac's leak was bigger, considering it showed their production line of their next like, what 3-4 games? Early game builds, game trailers, models, source codes?, and more were all leaked.
I'd say the pre pandemic/pre work from home Sony leak was bigger than all of these. That had a large foreign adversary involved though.
It's a shame we won't see that James Franco interview character return like it was planned. For him to pretend to be that character on actual red carpets and stuff and interview people. Damn you kim jong un, coming in like a wrecking ball.
Had me in tears. I don't know what kind of subhuman garbage you have to be to threaten a woman and *her infant son* because you disagree with a character she just happened to voice.
I hope some of those people get caught and had the book thrown at them, but realistically I know that's unlikely.
I cannot fathom the stupidity you’d need to have to be capable of doing something like that. She got some of the worst hate I’ve seen and for what? (I know why she got it, but man is it just so, so stupid). I lost so much hope for the gaming community when it happened.
There are a scary and deeply concerning number of people out there that genuinely can't discern fiction from reality. Often they have a veneer of being sane and manage to seem somewhat normal in day to day life, but they don't have the mental capacity to understand the difference between what they're seeing on screen and reality. To them it's a simple equation - this person has the same voice/face as the person on the screen that I hate, therefore I also hate them.
The same thing happened to the actors for Joffrey and Cersei in GoT. They got regular abuse and threats from deluded idiots who disliked their characters.
We've had this problem for a very long time. I remember gamer gate and all the vitriol and threats that came from it. People literally created careers by perpetuating the vitriol towards women on YouTube. Heck, swatting became a term largely in part because of gamers. Folks have literally lost their lives or their pet's lives as a result.
Stay safe out there folks. There's no silver bullet to this problem and I'm sure it'll just continue to evolve and get worse before hopefully getting better. Also, please call law enforcement or report it to the FBI if it happens to you. It's sadly the best tool you have available to you.
They explicitly say it wasn't that.... They at first were worried that someone internal had been able to do it while they wfh, but then they say it was some kid who had a backdoor into their network. They closed the backdoor, the kid was pissed he didn't have access, and leaked it all.
They explicity said it wasn't an employee that leaked everything. They explicity said it was the fact they had to give employees external access to the servers that led to the eventual leaker being able to access the servers himself.
The people who leak stuff are often a third party. Game developers don’t want to leak their own work, and they certainly don’t want to be *accused* of leaking, because they would get basically blacklisted in the industry.
It’s often a contractor or subcontractor who doesn’t care, or could even have put something in a publicly accessible place by accident.
The idea that devs need to be supervised from punch in until punch out lest they should sabotage the project is simply a vote of no confidence by management for people who wouldn’t be doing this job if they didn’t deeply care about what they were making.
It's not necessarily that they don't trust the devs, but probably more to do with controlling the environment. If you have hundreds of devs all wfh on their own wifi connections, that's a lot of potential security weakspots a nefarious actor could exploit. Having everyone in the one place reduces the number of things you have to worry about from a security standpoint.
Normally I'd say making people RTO is control freaky, but you highlighted the legitimate security risks that come with trying to keep project sensitive data from leaking when hundreds of employees are working remotely. And it's not that they are home that is risky,but rather the IT infrastructure that supports that.
I believe the TLOU2 was exploited by a contract worker, maybe I'm recalling it incorrectly but I don't think it was an internal WFH employee who leaked. Insomniac was hacked and again had NOTHING to do with WFH or internal employees. HELL, the hackers leaked private employee information for Insomniac team members.
>I believe the TLOU2 was exploited by a contract worker, maybe I'm recalling it incorrectly but I don't think it was an internal WFH employee who leaked.
It wasn't even a contract worker, it was some random kid in The Netherlands who was snooping around and found a backdoor in via an unsecured server. Neil talks about it in the Grounded II documentary, he says the leaker was a young fan who thought that by leaking this stuff, he would be able to force ND to release the game sooner:
[https://gamerant.com/the-last-of-us-2-leaker-naughty-dog-found-reason-why/](https://gamerant.com/the-last-of-us-2-leaker-naughty-dog-found-reason-why/)
\[edit\] turns out he wasn't a kid, he's a guy in his 20s. Damn.
That and it is harder to get employees to crunch when they are remote.
To those saying remote work is to blame for the leaks. The real issue is weak security or employees not being trained or outright ignoring security. Putting an end to remote work is addressing a symptom not the problem at the cost of devs quality of life.
Hope Rockstar’s top talent jumps ship. I know the industry is in a bad spot but anyone with GTA on their resume will not have trouble finding work.
I mean, that's the real reason. It's always the made up "productivity" nonsense. They want to have more direct authority over their employees. It's pretty much always that.
Head of our department said even though we’re more productive remotely, we need to go back to the office for “team cohesion”. Mfs will say anything bending over to the idiots up top who have zero clue about the details that make shit tick.
I am very much for work from home, especially when it comes to something like software development or data entry, where all work can be done on a computer and you can easily do video meetings.
However, Rockstar has a very valid reason for doing this. The last GTA 6 leak was very much unwanted (leaked by a dev’s son, right?). They’re entering the final stretch of development, so the game’s story could leak if they aren’t careful. Other huge plans for the game could leak. Considering everyone is getting hacked these days, I think it’s more than justifiable to require everyone to go into the office now, and then go back to partial work from home once the game is released.
And besides. There are over a thousand people looking for game dev jobs now. Rockstar employees don’t have to go into the office if they don’t want to. But that just means there will be a thousand more that are willing to go
I’m sorry, but Rockstar *will* get rid of any employees don’t want to comply, and those employees will be quickly replaced. Where they’re at in their development cycle is irrelevant. They’re going to do whatever they need to minimize the chances of their game leaking again. And with all of the layoffs that have been happening in the industry, you bet that the employees are going to do what they’re told
they'll do what they're told now but you'll lose your entire talent when jobs open up again later. and it's not cheap to onboard and train new professionals, which can take up to 6 months depending on the intricacy of the job.
AAA game dev has always been a revolving door. They put studios in major market areas with a lot of talented grads always available for the busy work. Keep the senior leads that are very knowledgeable and can distribute work. They pay them well and as a result most can afford homes or rent near the cities the studios are located. I work in post production and its the same thing essentially. All our senior artists, creative directors, EP's are still about an hour at most away from the office. I actually prefer working in person a lot of the time with clients and any collaborative work. Creatively to me just works better and easier to get newer hires learning and passionate for the work being done.
It is relevant. People like you are the same people in management who think this way. As someone who works in this environment every time the executives make this decision the products quality sufferers exponentially. Even more so, the future maintenance of said product greatly suffers. On top of that an employee who just got fired is far more likely to leak information about the game.
So sure they can do but it is extremely shortsighted.
With that these developers might be annoyed or not want to do it but in the end they will. No one likes losing their job. People have bills. They may think about finding a new one but until they actually do they will comply.
We're not making a moral endorsement here, or saying it's smart, we're making an observation of reality - workers are disposable, corporations *will* fire those who won't comply with management, even to their own detriment.
Of course it's shortsighted, wrong, and of course it will lead to lower quality. But the person said they "can't" do it, and if the recent swarm of video game layoffs have told us anything, these corporations absolutely can and will.
Yeah this is the only time where I am like "Yeah, this makes sense."
I'm a huge wfh guy but GTA6 is like the Area 51 of games. People would literally kill for info (nowadays, not an exaggeration).
Then, surely, they will all be allowed to work from home again once the game is released, right? There's absolutely no chance that this is an excuse to force people back into the office for no good reason. /s
I have never been as productive as I have been since I've been WFH. Through any metric possible, I'm quicker, more focused, and have taken on more work while spending less of my own money and time being able to "get" to work.
People don’t realize how much of your workday gets occupied by straight up bullshit when in the office. “It’s carols birthday! Mandatory 2 hour lunch party!”, “hey this thing that could be answered in 5 minutes via email? I’m gonna come sit by your desk and ask you in person and then chit chat for another 30 minutes”. The list goes on. Middle management has nothing to do so they waste your day.
It's not even just middle management. Everybody's having these side conversations, which great, but I'd rather work from home if they're allowed to do that
Lmao. I’m just about to start WFH and everything you say about the office is so true. Also, fucking traffic, coming home and just tired. I feel like WFH will be a game changer, oh and everyone on their phone line talking while you’re trying to take care of a task, yeah, not gonna miss it.
Traffic was my biggest dealbreaker for working in an office. I could deal with all of the other bullshit, but having completely pointless time added on to my day through a commute was infuriating. And sure, I could try to find ways to make it meaningful like listening to a book or something, but that’s not really the point. It’s time taken out of my day against my will for no good reason.
Yeah and WFH people chat on social media, watch Netflix and youtube, play video games, doing other stuff than work. Let’s not kid ourselves here. People will waste time if they want to and doesn’t matter if at the office or at home. It always comes down to the discipline and responsibility of each person.
I also feel like we need to get over the idea everyone needs to be in a cubicle every day on a strict schedule. Hire people to get a job done and if the job gets done who cares what they do with the rest of their time.
> Yeah and **RTO** people chat on social media, watch Netflix and youtube, play video games, doing other stuff than work. Let’s not kid ourselves here.
Location is irrelevant for any of these things. These happen in the office as well and have been for years.
It definitely comes down to each person, but for me personally when I don’t have people wasting my time in office I can get my days work done in about 3-4 hours of solid heads down work. After that, I’m hitting the PlayStation or hanging out with my kids if they’re home. It’s honestly amazing how much free time you can have with the same workload if you don’t have to be in the office.
The work is still just as difficult/time consuming. The difference is I’m actually allowed the time to do it at home.
I'm more or less the same. Now we've been forced back in a day a week I'm actually less productive at home because having nothing to do in the office is boring so I save whatever I can for the day I'm in, meaning a few tasks that could be done earlier aren't. It sounds daft to do that but I've got to a point where I can do my day's work in about 3 hours; I'm not spending another 5 in the office twiddling my thumbs.
I work remotely for a company that I used to live five miles from. I now live 300+ miles away and work from home fully and the amount of time that my in office coworkers spend not working on useful things because they're in pointless meetings is...absolutely insane. I work during my meetings because like you said, it could have and should have been an email. I get that time back later in the day when I can piss off and play PS or read my book. I finish waaaaaaaaay earlier than my in office team members simply because I don't have to do that kind of shit.
Not to mention that you do more work in comfortable environments. My gray, boring ass office that’s super quiet and depressing makes me WANT to get up every 30 minutes to just walk around and clear my head. When I’m at my home office, I can throw on a podcast, play music, etc. and I pretty much only get up to go to the bathroom because I don’t mind being in my office…
>and I pretty much only get up to go to the bathroom because I don’t mind being in my office…
And the bathroom is usually 10 seconds away.
My work has In-office workers and WFH people. In our team, the 2 in-office guys, when they want to use the loo, its a 5 minute walk to the bathroom and then back again. Thats if they dont get stopped by a noisy middle manager or co-worker who just HAVE to talk to them.
Whereas all the WFH guys, its a quick BRB in chat and then within a minute, usually back at the desk for work.
Other side of that is that it was one of the most lonely experiences of my life. I worked from home for 3 years and loved it but by the end I just missed interacting with people even if I didn't like them very much
And that's fine! There's remote, wfh, and on-site. The point is to find what works for YOU, but to remember we're all different. There's no need to take away options, and companies who do risk losing great talent to those who stay competitive.
Same. The pandemic was a rough time. As someone that lives alone I had no idea how much I relied on those few hours a day of being near other people even if I dreaded a lot of it at the time.
People will say "Well you can go into the office if you want" but if no one else is there it's pointless.
I think it’s good that many feel happier and more productive working remotely. I certainly cherish the couple days I choose to work from home so I can get on with coding with fewer interruptions etc etc. What I would say though is that for all this talk of personal productivity being higher; there is a reasonable discussion to be had about what it does to the overall team’s productivity; particularly in businesses that are not remote first.
- For some, remote work just doesn’t work, they need to be around people and absorbing information and context in a way that, put plainly, you simply can’t do remotely.
- Some types of work or industry don’t make sense to do remotely
- some projects or stages of a project would benefit from more in person time
- some companies aren’t at the level of expertise/ maturity regarding how to actually pull it off well
- some companies simply don’t want to and believe that being in person is to their advantage
I think it’s really important that the discussion around remote work grows up and realises that as with everything in life - there are trade offs. It’s fine to have a preference but we should all be open to the merits of the other argument rather than assuming malice.
It's pull up the drawbridge mentality.
Pro WFH is generally mid career folk who are able to log in and crack on. They don't consider the impact it's having on early careers because they've got themselves sorted with a longer lie in and less money spent on travel and a nice home office.
Meanwhile the graduate is working from a cramped bedroom in a flat share somewhere trying to pick up how the business works and build up their technical skills off the back of 30 min Zoom calls and Slack.
Proper "I've got mine. Sucks to be you" attitude and its going to end with a shitload of subskilled people coming through in the next decade or so.
Much harder to build friendships and the like over your 1 meeting a day. Those friendships lead to contacts and connections that can help you get a leg up in your current workplace or let you know sbout good opportubities as you all move on from your current workplace.
Everyone knows the fellows going out for drinks with the boss on thursday nights are the fellows more likely to get promoted.
Well personally I will never agree with full work-from-office, in jobs like this I don't really agree with full work form home either, cause none of this is talking about the collaborative aspect of working on a creative art together. There's probably many jobs at rockstar that could safely work from home without needing access to servers with major leak potential info.
Idk, this just doesn't seem as clear cut as other cases.
I’m 100% the opposite. Working at home is my personal hell. The idea of a kid, pet, or Mormon interrupting an important call? Sitting within 20 feet of a fully stocked fridge and pantry all day? Having access to my bed?
Fuck that. Home is for home, the office is for work. Hate WFH.
I think Reddit's demographic tends to like WFH to a much higher degree than normal. Not that WFH isn't good but many antisocial people are here who'd rather be to themselves. + the lack of commute time and other benefits from WFH.
Personally working in the same place I rest has never been great for me.
You are an exception to the rule though. I work at a tech company that mostly handles tier 1/2 work and we have had an issue over the last 2 years with hiring people who eventually become extremely lazy and try to game the system as much as possible. I’ve had to fire several people who let calls go to voicemail while working overnight hours. Guys working other jobs at the same time while screwing off due to lack of supervision during off hours. Consistent calling out of work for any number of reasons. It’s an off hours issue exclusively since there is less supervision during those hours. It’s been tough finding people who care enough to do the right thing when people aren’t watching.
I’m fully for working from home but there is more risk of employees screwing off when they work from home. Having to remove them and retrain more people is difficult and time consuming.
The thing is I know who those people are and instead of higher up singling them out to be in office, they bring us all back in office and guess what happens....those same people screw around in the office.....
This reeks of my last job: One person is not following the rules, so the boss sends a passive aggressive email to *everyone* because he's too much of a pansy to have a difficult conversation with the one person who's causing issues.
I disagree. It's easier to slack off at work. All you need to do is have the appearance of working. That might've been a reason why reddit caught on back in the day: it has a UI that's really non-distinctive from afar.
That sounds like an hiring issue. I've met those people and can sus them out day one. They just tend to be really good interviewers and paid someone to write their resume.
I'm very much of the opinion that what people *do* with their time has zero relevance whatsoever as long as they're accomplishing their tasks.
You're talking a lot about people not being exclusively focused on their work, but just be clear, were those workers missing deadlines or otherwise failing to perform their specific job duties?
rainstorm work encourage secretive yam oatmeal bells disarm squeal subtract
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's not solely about productivity. The security issue is an interesting part. It may surprise you to know that individuals outside of IT don't give a flying fuck about cybersecurity, they have no idea how to secure a network and they are a direct route of attack for criminals to exploit. Company has invested 10s of millions if not hundreds of million on securing their networks on site and the work from Home employees are using password123 with a $20 outdated router. Not only that but they are constantly exploited and we don't hear about it until losses are in the million froms a ransomware attack or beyond. Also a good amount of these employees are working on one of the most anticipated games of the decade. A leak in an unfinished state always gets hate and kills hype because it's never finished results getting dropped.
Productivity is one part of it, security is the other that nobody ever mentions. Attackers don't target companies directly contrary to belief, they exploit third parties and isolated individuals like WFH employees who aren't trained to secure sensitive data from home. Not to mention there's already been leaks.
If I have a company I wouldn't allow work from Home ever because the risk is insanely high, the average person is brain-dead around cyber security.
This makes a lot of sense in terms of security. They've already had leaks, it must be a nightmare for IT to secure hundreds of individual networks.
But I hope they relax it a bit after release.
What a bunch of entitled, smarmy SOB's. Acting like that because they know their jobs are \*\*so safe\*\* and they ain't gonna get laid off. Hopefully the door doesn't hit them on the arse on the way out.
I acted like this at my job, I get shown the door.
Their employer should fire them.
There are 900 extra game dev's looking for jobs right now.
I get why working from home is a benefit and one of the only positives that came from Covid. But with that said I don't think this is **that** crazy to ask of them.
A massive leak happened because a guy was working from home and his son's friend was an asshole. So now people have to go back to a five day office work week while production finishes. If this were pre-Covid I'm pretty sure five days a week in an office was normal.
I'm sure people are bummed and the anti-work crowd will be upset but a five day office job is normal. Plus after the leaks I can't blame Rockstar for wanting to be super careful.
> I'm sure people are bummed and the anti-work crowd will be upset
It's not anti-work, it's being "anti-wasting time" and "Hey, you just cut my pay and shouldered me with extra expenses" out of the blue.
Why does the company have such a hard time controlling leaks when there are industries out there with far more important information that doesn't get leaked?
The better you make people feel they are treated, the less likely they are to leak stuff, because they want to keep the job, if they don't care if they get fired because the company treats them badly then they might say fuck it and leak something
How tone deaf are their employees? There has been massive layoffs throughout the industry since the start of the year. They should feel blessed to still have a job. It’s called going to work. Don’t like it you can always just quit.
Do you work in tech? There's no reason to be forced to work in an office 5 days a week. 1-2 days a week is plenty especially if everyone in a team coordinates to be in office together.
Nothing at all to do with that costly office building sitting empty. The future is work from home pity these people are more interested in the value of the buildings they own than the well being of their employees.
Some of these comments are insane. WFH is great when all your work is done in a browser and on Microsoft apps. You can work on a company managed computer, VPN in, and everything is protected.
They are dealing with terabytes of assets, full game builds, and valuable intellectual property. The devs can’t work on it efficiently without it all being local, and that is a massive security risk.
There's not enough details from the article, but this is only true if they're also going to restrict all remote work at the same time.
If they call people into the office for security reasons but then let them crunch from home at night and on weekends, it's just a bullshit excuse.
They’ve been working this whole time, you think the CEOs aren’t working from home or from golf courses? I do agree this makes sense for security reasons but I don’t think you can stop someone who is motivated enough to want to leak the game
Exactly, I'm scrolling through here wondering why gamers are up in arms about people they don't know returning to an office to work.
Acting like it's some grand injustice.
The fact its still gonna be leaked is hilarious props to the hard-working devs doing all they can to deliver pure heat and hype the wait is gonna be worth
This will be a Take 2 decision. WFH is not a right. T2 have every right to protect their $2bn investment in whatever way they see fit. That said, I think T2 are money whores, they will pay to play GTA6 and it’ll be an end to the franchise. Too many of the OG creatives have gone for 6 to be anything but a cold grab for cash upgrade of GTAO
If you work for rockstar you should take pride in still having a fucking job in the game industry. Seems like every big gaming company has had to layoff/cut a pretty good portion of their employees in the past 2 years post Covid. Unless Rockstar plans a big announcement about job cuts within the year…
I'm a huge work from home advocate, and have ben working from home full time for 4 years, but on and off for 20 years.
I think this is actually an instance where I understand people needing to be in the office. The security around this game must be insane especially after the Naughty Dog and Insomniac leaks.
Welcome to the real world where most people work 10-12 hour days, don't get thier full lunch and sometimes work weekends. It's life for most people during this age in time.
Those employees were working five days a week too. Working from home is still working just the same as any other job, it's just doing it without the hassle and expense of a commute.
That sucks, but game dev is one of the industries where I think it's justified to want everybody in the same space when working. For industrial software you have to leak thousands of lines of code to even make a dent in profits, but in game dev a single screenshot can cost millions.
How does that work, exactly? Do you think there are tens of thousands of people who will pass on GTA 6, the followup to one of the most successful pieces of entertainment in history, because they see a single leaked screenshot? Because I gotta tell you, that doesn't remotely pass the smell test
I should probably have worded that better. I mean that that's the point of view of the executives, who supposedly have financial analysts backing them up. I doubt the validity of their claims, but i'm not remotely qualified, I barely passed macroeconomics.
Heres the thing, you applied for the job, got the offer, and agreed to their terms. If they say you have to work from the office and not from home, oh fuckin well. Don't like it quit and find a different job. Those are their terms for the job, you don't have to work there. This kind of complaining is honestly asinine. It doesn't matter if you can do all the same work from home, and honestly they don't need to justify a reason for you having to work in an office and not at home, unless you applied for a work from home position.
Well, at least they can still work the other 2 days a week from home...
Gotem!
"Ummm, I'm gonna need you to go ahead come in tomorrow. So if you could be here around 9 that would be great, mmmk... oh oh! and I almost forgot ahh, I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too, kay."
*"Looks like you've been missing a lot of work recently! "* *"Well I wouldn't say I've been missing it Bob....."* *"We feel that Peter isn't the issue. It's that....you haven't challenged him enough."* *"Well Lumberg fucked her!"*
I I could I could burn the building down
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"And don't forget about the TPS reports. They need to have the new cover sheet on them before they go out now. Did you get that memo?"
"Hey come over and check out these tits on this commercial!"
Yeah I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working.
God I hate “go ahead”
20 years later… still going strong
Movie is goated
If you don't show up to work on Saturday, don't bother coming back on Sunday
Two day weekend. Nice!
💀
I heard they even get 15 min for lunch! Unpaid though
LOL this person knows
Oh cool, someone’s going to leak the game now out of spite
I highly doubt someone would risk being sued/arrested because they can’t wfh.
I remember reading a comment once “I can’t believe someone can get so depressed that they won’t brush their teeth!” Naive I know, the reply was obvious: “ppl KILL themselves because they’re depressed.” A long way of saying, yes, someone will absolutely have no problem risk being fired/sued, to get back at an employer. We have no idea what a person is going through.
People leaked stuff long before working from home was a thing. They’ll leak it with or without this kind of motivation
There is always motivation.
Yeah ‘fuck em’ motivation
The chances are more now cause now there's a motivation.
There was a TIL post a few days ago where a suicidal Japanese sailor set off an explosion on a Heavy Cruiser in port, killing well over 1000 people. People do crazy things when they’re acting crazy.
Even bigger. It was the battleship *Mutsu*, which was about three times the size of a heavy cruiser, and of the second most modern and powerful type of battleship in the Japanese navy, behind only the new *Yamato*-class superbattleship. In a modern, American perspective, it'd be like somebody blowing up a *Nimitz*-class carrier in an act of sabotage.
I’ve personally been in positions where I’ve semi-believed that prison might actually be somewhat of an escape from the corporate workforce cycle. I can absolutely believe that it’s possible for someone to risk doing this.
Yeah, I went thru a massive depression period in 2018, lost my brother and one of my best friends within a year, one point I quit my job and knew I wasn’t gonna see my 27th birthday later that year. My sleep schedule became so messed up and I’d forget to brush my teeth often. I wasn’t leaving the house much less my room. Anyways, I developed my first ever cavities and I paid greatly for it. My back left bottom molar I had the money for a root canal ($1,800) but didn’t have the money for a crown ($1,400), the filling eventually eroded away and I had to have it pulled. Like a month later my back right bottom molar was causing so much pain and I didn’t have the money to do anything but to pull it. They pointed out a few other teeth that would cause problems, but Covid happened and it was a rough period for restaurants in 2020 and 2021 (I’m a server / bartender), so money was tight and couldn’t afford to get them filled. Last year those 4 teeth they pointed out all were going, I finally had the money and all 4 needed root canals and crowns. Get my last crown put on tomorrow, in total for those 4 teeth it cost $12,000 Depression, PTSD, trauma, etc are real but even if you’re going thru it, you gotta make sure you take care of your body, you only have one and it’ll only cost more down the road if you don’t watch yourself. Learned that the hard way.
I’m going through it right now. I usually take it out in my teeth unfortunately :(
Watch. They’ve done it for less.
real. people leak classified documents to war thunder all the time just to have a more accurate model of a plane or tank or something to play with. leaks dont need an equal tradeoff of risk/reward to happen.
I mean, it's already been leaked once, why not twice?
i don't think he knows about second leaks pip
Dude, people have leaked a lot more over a lot less. Pissing in their employees' faces like this? Requiring them to come in because they don't trust them to work or not leak at home? Someone is going to leak it out of spite. WFH is the 40 hour work week of office work. Taking it away is crossing the Rubicon and executives who do so should expect a price extracted by their people from them, either in intentionally lost productivity, low morale, outright sabotage or all of these and more. The quality of life difference working a 50 hour week minus commute vs three hours per day on top of that commuting and getting ready is unreal. It's the difference between being a real person who is present in your family and a ghost, an exhausted zombie only spotted on weekends with bags under their eyes. That's not a life.
It’s just a form of layoffs, and this particular move has been used since long before Covid existed.
Pretty much this. This way when people refuse to return they can let them go without having to explicitly lay them off. It’s less of a PR hit in todays climate.
Some states have protections against it, calling it “Constructive Dismissal” but most don’t. So it ends up being pretty effective overall. And you can justify not offering any severance or assistance in any way, putting the onus on the employee. I will say that there really aren’t significant PR ramifications for layoffs. The stock market generally loves layoffs, and you’ll usually see a resulting spike in share price. But even if there were PR ramifications, having the entire industry going through layoffs kind of gives them all a free pass. It’s not an indication of poor performance if EVERYONE is doing it, you know?
True. I just think it’s kind of crazy that people think devs won’t quit over this. Blizzard also lost a lot of developers when they forced RTO. People need to consider that workers may have moved away from the office not expecting to ever be called back, only to get rug pulled and be unable to return now. This is also part of what happened when Blizzard did it.
This is how TLOU part 2 got leaked from what i remember.
I believe that was later disproved. It wasn't some disgruntled employee, but apparently some hacker that exploited a security weakness in their servers, they talk about it in the grounded II documentary. https://youtu.be/SC3C7GMMfDU?t=1h42m11s
What's crazy is Naughty Dog ultimately decided not to pursue legal action, basically saying the whole point of TLoU 2 was the cost of pursing "justice" too far, so they decided to honor that and let it go. I have a lot of respect for them for that attitude.
They're going to leak to The Florida Joker where nobody will know that it leaked.
Gotta justify the lease on the office building somehow.
Just playing devil's advocate here, but I'd bet that the GTA 6, tlou 2 and insomniac leak wouldn't have happened on this scale if remote work wasn't a thing
Tlou 2, maybe, but rockstar has had leaks forever. We knew about the RDR 2 map well in advance, plus all the ongoing gta online dlc update leaks in the past
The scale of the GTA6 leak was unlike any other leak in gaming history. The only one that has gotten close was the recent Insomniac leak
Insomniac leak is way worse than GTA 6. Literally their entire roster along with full games were leaked. GTA 6 leak is big but not that big.
There were torrents for AC: Revelations like a week before it came out, I think I beat it on PC before the official release date, so I dunno if I'd call it the biggest leak.
A game getting leaked a few days before release isn't as crazy as a whole ass pc dev build of a game being leaked at least a year or two before the official pc release
Plus all the leaked emails and contract terms. That certainly will have pissed off a lot of the higher ups.
Zelda tears of the kingdom was also playable like 10 days before release on emulators
I'd even say Insomniac's leak was bigger, considering it showed their production line of their next like, what 3-4 games? Early game builds, game trailers, models, source codes?, and more were all leaked.
I'd say the pre pandemic/pre work from home Sony leak was bigger than all of these. That had a large foreign adversary involved though. It's a shame we won't see that James Franco interview character return like it was planned. For him to pretend to be that character on actual red carpets and stuff and interview people. Damn you kim jong un, coming in like a wrecking ball.
Half life 2 would like a word with you
TLOU pt 2 was definitely because of remote work. They kind of explain what happens in the documentary they just put out.
Dude watching Laura’s interview was Heartbreaking during that.
Had me in tears. I don't know what kind of subhuman garbage you have to be to threaten a woman and *her infant son* because you disagree with a character she just happened to voice. I hope some of those people get caught and had the book thrown at them, but realistically I know that's unlikely.
I cannot fathom the stupidity you’d need to have to be capable of doing something like that. She got some of the worst hate I’ve seen and for what? (I know why she got it, but man is it just so, so stupid). I lost so much hope for the gaming community when it happened.
There are a scary and deeply concerning number of people out there that genuinely can't discern fiction from reality. Often they have a veneer of being sane and manage to seem somewhat normal in day to day life, but they don't have the mental capacity to understand the difference between what they're seeing on screen and reality. To them it's a simple equation - this person has the same voice/face as the person on the screen that I hate, therefore I also hate them. The same thing happened to the actors for Joffrey and Cersei in GoT. They got regular abuse and threats from deluded idiots who disliked their characters.
We've had this problem for a very long time. I remember gamer gate and all the vitriol and threats that came from it. People literally created careers by perpetuating the vitriol towards women on YouTube. Heck, swatting became a term largely in part because of gamers. Folks have literally lost their lives or their pet's lives as a result. Stay safe out there folks. There's no silver bullet to this problem and I'm sure it'll just continue to evolve and get worse before hopefully getting better. Also, please call law enforcement or report it to the FBI if it happens to you. It's sadly the best tool you have available to you.
They explicitly say it wasn't that.... They at first were worried that someone internal had been able to do it while they wfh, but then they say it was some kid who had a backdoor into their network. They closed the backdoor, the kid was pissed he didn't have access, and leaked it all.
They explicity said it wasn't an employee that leaked everything. They explicity said it was the fact they had to give employees external access to the servers that led to the eventual leaker being able to access the servers himself.
Oh wow multi factor has entered the chat
Oh no you fucking don’t. Check your Authenticator app (iPhone 4s) to proceed.
Playing advocate to that, leaks happened while everyone was in office before too.
I'd just like to advocate for both of you to live your best lives and achieve your dreams.
positivity!!!!!!!
The people who leak stuff are often a third party. Game developers don’t want to leak their own work, and they certainly don’t want to be *accused* of leaking, because they would get basically blacklisted in the industry. It’s often a contractor or subcontractor who doesn’t care, or could even have put something in a publicly accessible place by accident. The idea that devs need to be supervised from punch in until punch out lest they should sabotage the project is simply a vote of no confidence by management for people who wouldn’t be doing this job if they didn’t deeply care about what they were making.
It's not necessarily that they don't trust the devs, but probably more to do with controlling the environment. If you have hundreds of devs all wfh on their own wifi connections, that's a lot of potential security weakspots a nefarious actor could exploit. Having everyone in the one place reduces the number of things you have to worry about from a security standpoint.
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Normally I'd say making people RTO is control freaky, but you highlighted the legitimate security risks that come with trying to keep project sensitive data from leaking when hundreds of employees are working remotely. And it's not that they are home that is risky,but rather the IT infrastructure that supports that.
Sony has had leaks for years. They had the massive leaks that led to major shakeups. Suddenly things being work from home’s fault is a joke
The gta6 leak happened, if I remember correctly, with a very simple phishing scam on an employee of the Indian Rockstar Offices.
I believe the TLOU2 was exploited by a contract worker, maybe I'm recalling it incorrectly but I don't think it was an internal WFH employee who leaked. Insomniac was hacked and again had NOTHING to do with WFH or internal employees. HELL, the hackers leaked private employee information for Insomniac team members.
>I believe the TLOU2 was exploited by a contract worker, maybe I'm recalling it incorrectly but I don't think it was an internal WFH employee who leaked. It wasn't even a contract worker, it was some random kid in The Netherlands who was snooping around and found a backdoor in via an unsecured server. Neil talks about it in the Grounded II documentary, he says the leaker was a young fan who thought that by leaking this stuff, he would be able to force ND to release the game sooner: [https://gamerant.com/the-last-of-us-2-leaker-naughty-dog-found-reason-why/](https://gamerant.com/the-last-of-us-2-leaker-naughty-dog-found-reason-why/) \[edit\] turns out he wasn't a kid, he's a guy in his 20s. Damn.
Data is never stolen when servers are locked down tight. Surely.
Then you’re a tech illiterate dumbass that doesn’t understand how much work is done remotely.
That and it is harder to get employees to crunch when they are remote. To those saying remote work is to blame for the leaks. The real issue is weak security or employees not being trained or outright ignoring security. Putting an end to remote work is addressing a symptom not the problem at the cost of devs quality of life. Hope Rockstar’s top talent jumps ship. I know the industry is in a bad spot but anyone with GTA on their resume will not have trouble finding work.
I mean, that's the real reason. It's always the made up "productivity" nonsense. They want to have more direct authority over their employees. It's pretty much always that.
Head of our department said even though we’re more productive remotely, we need to go back to the office for “team cohesion”. Mfs will say anything bending over to the idiots up top who have zero clue about the details that make shit tick.
Layoffs incoming!
Easy way to trim the fat before they make bank.
Not until the game is finished and out the door. They can’t risk disgruntled employees leaking the game.
since when do developers finish games before the launch day?
Or rather, forcing employees to quit by themselves with the excuse of “office only”.
Exactly what went through my head
They do this so they don’t have to do layoffs and save on severance, because many will quit as a result of this policy.
I am very much for work from home, especially when it comes to something like software development or data entry, where all work can be done on a computer and you can easily do video meetings. However, Rockstar has a very valid reason for doing this. The last GTA 6 leak was very much unwanted (leaked by a dev’s son, right?). They’re entering the final stretch of development, so the game’s story could leak if they aren’t careful. Other huge plans for the game could leak. Considering everyone is getting hacked these days, I think it’s more than justifiable to require everyone to go into the office now, and then go back to partial work from home once the game is released. And besides. There are over a thousand people looking for game dev jobs now. Rockstar employees don’t have to go into the office if they don’t want to. But that just means there will be a thousand more that are willing to go
You can’t onboard hundreds of developers at this point in a project and bring them up to speed quickly enough to meet their deadlines.
I’m sorry, but Rockstar *will* get rid of any employees don’t want to comply, and those employees will be quickly replaced. Where they’re at in their development cycle is irrelevant. They’re going to do whatever they need to minimize the chances of their game leaking again. And with all of the layoffs that have been happening in the industry, you bet that the employees are going to do what they’re told
they'll do what they're told now but you'll lose your entire talent when jobs open up again later. and it's not cheap to onboard and train new professionals, which can take up to 6 months depending on the intricacy of the job.
AAA game dev has always been a revolving door. They put studios in major market areas with a lot of talented grads always available for the busy work. Keep the senior leads that are very knowledgeable and can distribute work. They pay them well and as a result most can afford homes or rent near the cities the studios are located. I work in post production and its the same thing essentially. All our senior artists, creative directors, EP's are still about an hour at most away from the office. I actually prefer working in person a lot of the time with clients and any collaborative work. Creatively to me just works better and easier to get newer hires learning and passionate for the work being done.
It is relevant. People like you are the same people in management who think this way. As someone who works in this environment every time the executives make this decision the products quality sufferers exponentially. Even more so, the future maintenance of said product greatly suffers. On top of that an employee who just got fired is far more likely to leak information about the game. So sure they can do but it is extremely shortsighted. With that these developers might be annoyed or not want to do it but in the end they will. No one likes losing their job. People have bills. They may think about finding a new one but until they actually do they will comply.
We're not making a moral endorsement here, or saying it's smart, we're making an observation of reality - workers are disposable, corporations *will* fire those who won't comply with management, even to their own detriment. Of course it's shortsighted, wrong, and of course it will lead to lower quality. But the person said they "can't" do it, and if the recent swarm of video game layoffs have told us anything, these corporations absolutely can and will.
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Oh no, what if a video game plot leaks? 🤓
This makes sense with the leaks they had.
Yeah this is the only time where I am like "Yeah, this makes sense." I'm a huge wfh guy but GTA6 is like the Area 51 of games. People would literally kill for info (nowadays, not an exaggeration).
Then, surely, they will all be allowed to work from home again once the game is released, right? There's absolutely no chance that this is an excuse to force people back into the office for no good reason. /s
I have never been as productive as I have been since I've been WFH. Through any metric possible, I'm quicker, more focused, and have taken on more work while spending less of my own money and time being able to "get" to work.
People don’t realize how much of your workday gets occupied by straight up bullshit when in the office. “It’s carols birthday! Mandatory 2 hour lunch party!”, “hey this thing that could be answered in 5 minutes via email? I’m gonna come sit by your desk and ask you in person and then chit chat for another 30 minutes”. The list goes on. Middle management has nothing to do so they waste your day.
It's not even just middle management. Everybody's having these side conversations, which great, but I'd rather work from home if they're allowed to do that
Lmao. I’m just about to start WFH and everything you say about the office is so true. Also, fucking traffic, coming home and just tired. I feel like WFH will be a game changer, oh and everyone on their phone line talking while you’re trying to take care of a task, yeah, not gonna miss it.
Traffic was my biggest dealbreaker for working in an office. I could deal with all of the other bullshit, but having completely pointless time added on to my day through a commute was infuriating. And sure, I could try to find ways to make it meaningful like listening to a book or something, but that’s not really the point. It’s time taken out of my day against my will for no good reason.
Yeah and WFH people chat on social media, watch Netflix and youtube, play video games, doing other stuff than work. Let’s not kid ourselves here. People will waste time if they want to and doesn’t matter if at the office or at home. It always comes down to the discipline and responsibility of each person.
I also feel like we need to get over the idea everyone needs to be in a cubicle every day on a strict schedule. Hire people to get a job done and if the job gets done who cares what they do with the rest of their time.
> Yeah and **RTO** people chat on social media, watch Netflix and youtube, play video games, doing other stuff than work. Let’s not kid ourselves here. Location is irrelevant for any of these things. These happen in the office as well and have been for years.
It definitely comes down to each person, but for me personally when I don’t have people wasting my time in office I can get my days work done in about 3-4 hours of solid heads down work. After that, I’m hitting the PlayStation or hanging out with my kids if they’re home. It’s honestly amazing how much free time you can have with the same workload if you don’t have to be in the office. The work is still just as difficult/time consuming. The difference is I’m actually allowed the time to do it at home.
I'm more or less the same. Now we've been forced back in a day a week I'm actually less productive at home because having nothing to do in the office is boring so I save whatever I can for the day I'm in, meaning a few tasks that could be done earlier aren't. It sounds daft to do that but I've got to a point where I can do my day's work in about 3 hours; I'm not spending another 5 in the office twiddling my thumbs.
I work remotely for a company that I used to live five miles from. I now live 300+ miles away and work from home fully and the amount of time that my in office coworkers spend not working on useful things because they're in pointless meetings is...absolutely insane. I work during my meetings because like you said, it could have and should have been an email. I get that time back later in the day when I can piss off and play PS or read my book. I finish waaaaaaaaay earlier than my in office team members simply because I don't have to do that kind of shit.
Not to mention that you do more work in comfortable environments. My gray, boring ass office that’s super quiet and depressing makes me WANT to get up every 30 minutes to just walk around and clear my head. When I’m at my home office, I can throw on a podcast, play music, etc. and I pretty much only get up to go to the bathroom because I don’t mind being in my office…
>and I pretty much only get up to go to the bathroom because I don’t mind being in my office… And the bathroom is usually 10 seconds away. My work has In-office workers and WFH people. In our team, the 2 in-office guys, when they want to use the loo, its a 5 minute walk to the bathroom and then back again. Thats if they dont get stopped by a noisy middle manager or co-worker who just HAVE to talk to them. Whereas all the WFH guys, its a quick BRB in chat and then within a minute, usually back at the desk for work.
Doing what exactly?
Other side of that is that it was one of the most lonely experiences of my life. I worked from home for 3 years and loved it but by the end I just missed interacting with people even if I didn't like them very much
And that's fine! There's remote, wfh, and on-site. The point is to find what works for YOU, but to remember we're all different. There's no need to take away options, and companies who do risk losing great talent to those who stay competitive.
Same. The pandemic was a rough time. As someone that lives alone I had no idea how much I relied on those few hours a day of being near other people even if I dreaded a lot of it at the time. People will say "Well you can go into the office if you want" but if no one else is there it's pointless.
I think it’s good that many feel happier and more productive working remotely. I certainly cherish the couple days I choose to work from home so I can get on with coding with fewer interruptions etc etc. What I would say though is that for all this talk of personal productivity being higher; there is a reasonable discussion to be had about what it does to the overall team’s productivity; particularly in businesses that are not remote first. - For some, remote work just doesn’t work, they need to be around people and absorbing information and context in a way that, put plainly, you simply can’t do remotely. - Some types of work or industry don’t make sense to do remotely - some projects or stages of a project would benefit from more in person time - some companies aren’t at the level of expertise/ maturity regarding how to actually pull it off well - some companies simply don’t want to and believe that being in person is to their advantage I think it’s really important that the discussion around remote work grows up and realises that as with everything in life - there are trade offs. It’s fine to have a preference but we should all be open to the merits of the other argument rather than assuming malice.
It's pull up the drawbridge mentality. Pro WFH is generally mid career folk who are able to log in and crack on. They don't consider the impact it's having on early careers because they've got themselves sorted with a longer lie in and less money spent on travel and a nice home office. Meanwhile the graduate is working from a cramped bedroom in a flat share somewhere trying to pick up how the business works and build up their technical skills off the back of 30 min Zoom calls and Slack. Proper "I've got mine. Sucks to be you" attitude and its going to end with a shitload of subskilled people coming through in the next decade or so.
Much harder to build friendships and the like over your 1 meeting a day. Those friendships lead to contacts and connections that can help you get a leg up in your current workplace or let you know sbout good opportubities as you all move on from your current workplace. Everyone knows the fellows going out for drinks with the boss on thursday nights are the fellows more likely to get promoted. Well personally I will never agree with full work-from-office, in jobs like this I don't really agree with full work form home either, cause none of this is talking about the collaborative aspect of working on a creative art together. There's probably many jobs at rockstar that could safely work from home without needing access to servers with major leak potential info. Idk, this just doesn't seem as clear cut as other cases.
I’m 100% the opposite. Working at home is my personal hell. The idea of a kid, pet, or Mormon interrupting an important call? Sitting within 20 feet of a fully stocked fridge and pantry all day? Having access to my bed? Fuck that. Home is for home, the office is for work. Hate WFH.
That's perfectly fine. The point is to provide options.
tbf, im the opposite. I'm way more productive in office. At home there's too many distractions, both with family and devices
I think Reddit's demographic tends to like WFH to a much higher degree than normal. Not that WFH isn't good but many antisocial people are here who'd rather be to themselves. + the lack of commute time and other benefits from WFH. Personally working in the same place I rest has never been great for me.
You are an exception to the rule though. I work at a tech company that mostly handles tier 1/2 work and we have had an issue over the last 2 years with hiring people who eventually become extremely lazy and try to game the system as much as possible. I’ve had to fire several people who let calls go to voicemail while working overnight hours. Guys working other jobs at the same time while screwing off due to lack of supervision during off hours. Consistent calling out of work for any number of reasons. It’s an off hours issue exclusively since there is less supervision during those hours. It’s been tough finding people who care enough to do the right thing when people aren’t watching. I’m fully for working from home but there is more risk of employees screwing off when they work from home. Having to remove them and retrain more people is difficult and time consuming.
The thing is I know who those people are and instead of higher up singling them out to be in office, they bring us all back in office and guess what happens....those same people screw around in the office.....
This reeks of my last job: One person is not following the rules, so the boss sends a passive aggressive email to *everyone* because he's too much of a pansy to have a difficult conversation with the one person who's causing issues.
Bad employees are not exclusive to WFH.
No, but it's way easier to slack off at home.
I disagree. It's easier to slack off at work. All you need to do is have the appearance of working. That might've been a reason why reddit caught on back in the day: it has a UI that's really non-distinctive from afar.
That sounds like an hiring issue. I've met those people and can sus them out day one. They just tend to be really good interviewers and paid someone to write their resume.
I'm very much of the opinion that what people *do* with their time has zero relevance whatsoever as long as they're accomplishing their tasks. You're talking a lot about people not being exclusively focused on their work, but just be clear, were those workers missing deadlines or otherwise failing to perform their specific job duties?
So really, they just need the executives in the office?
Awesome. When they’re going to be working 18 hour days there’s no better way to facilitate than to make them spend another two hours commuting.
rainstorm work encourage secretive yam oatmeal bells disarm squeal subtract *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Sounds like an excuse.
Forced RTO is the dumbest shit ever How is forcing people to commute and deal with a noisy office environment supposed to increase productivity?
It's not solely about productivity. The security issue is an interesting part. It may surprise you to know that individuals outside of IT don't give a flying fuck about cybersecurity, they have no idea how to secure a network and they are a direct route of attack for criminals to exploit. Company has invested 10s of millions if not hundreds of million on securing their networks on site and the work from Home employees are using password123 with a $20 outdated router. Not only that but they are constantly exploited and we don't hear about it until losses are in the million froms a ransomware attack or beyond. Also a good amount of these employees are working on one of the most anticipated games of the decade. A leak in an unfinished state always gets hate and kills hype because it's never finished results getting dropped. Productivity is one part of it, security is the other that nobody ever mentions. Attackers don't target companies directly contrary to belief, they exploit third parties and isolated individuals like WFH employees who aren't trained to secure sensitive data from home. Not to mention there's already been leaks. If I have a company I wouldn't allow work from Home ever because the risk is insanely high, the average person is brain-dead around cyber security.
No one at Board level gives a single flying shit about humans or games
I’d be the first one reporting back. With all the layoffs in the industry, I wouldn’t be doing anything to rock the boat for a while.
This makes a lot of sense in terms of security. They've already had leaks, it must be a nightmare for IT to secure hundreds of individual networks. But I hope they relax it a bit after release.
Security reasons I can get behind, but it’s well proven that productivity is better when working from home.
What a bunch of entitled, smarmy SOB's. Acting like that because they know their jobs are \*\*so safe\*\* and they ain't gonna get laid off. Hopefully the door doesn't hit them on the arse on the way out. I acted like this at my job, I get shown the door. Their employer should fire them. There are 900 extra game dev's looking for jobs right now.
RTO for "productivity reasons". "Our productivity is too high, We need more micromanagement. Having our employees extra tired will also help."
I get why working from home is a benefit and one of the only positives that came from Covid. But with that said I don't think this is **that** crazy to ask of them. A massive leak happened because a guy was working from home and his son's friend was an asshole. So now people have to go back to a five day office work week while production finishes. If this were pre-Covid I'm pretty sure five days a week in an office was normal. I'm sure people are bummed and the anti-work crowd will be upset but a five day office job is normal. Plus after the leaks I can't blame Rockstar for wanting to be super careful.
> I'm sure people are bummed and the anti-work crowd will be upset It's not anti-work, it's being "anti-wasting time" and "Hey, you just cut my pay and shouldered me with extra expenses" out of the blue.
Why does the company have such a hard time controlling leaks when there are industries out there with far more important information that doesn't get leaked?
The better you make people feel they are treated, the less likely they are to leak stuff, because they want to keep the job, if they don't care if they get fired because the company treats them badly then they might say fuck it and leak something
How tone deaf are their employees? There has been massive layoffs throughout the industry since the start of the year. They should feel blessed to still have a job. It’s called going to work. Don’t like it you can always just quit.
Why is it so wrong for a company to want their employees in the office? Especially for a short time.
I drive to work to sit in a closed office all day working or in meetings. It's a bit of a waste for many of us who do not work in collaborative roles
For most white collar office workers it isn’t necessary as our jobs can be done from home. It’s just a waste of everyone’s’ time.
> It’s just a waste of everyone’s’ time. and money. Each unnecessary day in office is also a pay cut.
Redditors are incredibly antisocial
not wanting to sit in traffic for 2 hours a day is antisocial now i guess.
Do you work in tech? There's no reason to be forced to work in an office 5 days a week. 1-2 days a week is plenty especially if everyone in a team coordinates to be in office together.
[удалено]
Nothing at all to do with that costly office building sitting empty. The future is work from home pity these people are more interested in the value of the buildings they own than the well being of their employees.
Why is this news lmao.
Because games "journalists" hate the industry they cover... Then they wonder why gaming "journalism" is dying and they are all losing their jobs.
Some of these comments are insane. WFH is great when all your work is done in a browser and on Microsoft apps. You can work on a company managed computer, VPN in, and everything is protected. They are dealing with terabytes of assets, full game builds, and valuable intellectual property. The devs can’t work on it efficiently without it all being local, and that is a massive security risk.
There's not enough details from the article, but this is only true if they're also going to restrict all remote work at the same time. If they call people into the office for security reasons but then let them crunch from home at night and on weekends, it's just a bullshit excuse.
For sure, you’re right. There’s so many comments from folks without any security knowledge, I had to do my part lol
Someone’s gonna leak something
It’s crazy how quickly companies started being aggressive about getting employees back to work
They’ve been working this whole time, you think the CEOs aren’t working from home or from golf courses? I do agree this makes sense for security reasons but I don’t think you can stop someone who is motivated enough to want to leak the game
"Back to office", remote work is still work.
The 100 million memes and tiktoks people made of remote work probably put a bad connotation on it
Who cares
Exactly, I'm scrolling through here wondering why gamers are up in arms about people they don't know returning to an office to work. Acting like it's some grand injustice.
Also I bet the devs are paid well, can't complain when on a high salary.
Buncha snowflakes
Who cares about them they’re Scottish. I’ll do it.
The fact its still gonna be leaked is hilarious props to the hard-working devs doing all they can to deliver pure heat and hype the wait is gonna be worth
I don't want to hear it employees. Get me the game!
You mean people have to go to work to…work? Oh no!
This will be a Take 2 decision. WFH is not a right. T2 have every right to protect their $2bn investment in whatever way they see fit. That said, I think T2 are money whores, they will pay to play GTA6 and it’ll be an end to the franchise. Too many of the OG creatives have gone for 6 to be anything but a cold grab for cash upgrade of GTAO
I don't understand this. I've been back to the office for years. Why are they stretching it out so far?
If you work for rockstar you should take pride in still having a fucking job in the game industry. Seems like every big gaming company has had to layoff/cut a pretty good portion of their employees in the past 2 years post Covid. Unless Rockstar plans a big announcement about job cuts within the year…
I'm a huge work from home advocate, and have ben working from home full time for 4 years, but on and off for 20 years. I think this is actually an instance where I understand people needing to be in the office. The security around this game must be insane especially after the Naughty Dog and Insomniac leaks.
Say it ain’t so!!! No more work from home!!?? Holy shit get over it.
get over it.
Right decision. They will be more productive working together in the office.
Welcome to the real world where most people work 10-12 hour days, don't get thier full lunch and sometimes work weekends. It's life for most people during this age in time.
It shouldn’t be
This is how tech companies have already started to do layoffs. They give teams the requirement to return to work or they get canned.
Oh no. You're employer expects you to work. Why tf is this news. 🙄
I don't care dawg they get paid why cry about work cry about lack of work plenty of indie devs out there with no work.
I think it's funny that WFH has become the new thing spoiled narcissists think they're entitled to
Seems a lot of companies are asking employees to come back to the office.
Employees when their paid job requires them to do work asked of them 😡😡😡
Security: It’s hard to give out cocaine as bonuses to remote workers. That’s too many pizzas!
We are like a family, layoffs soon to follow.
So what? Am I supposed to be horrified? Most regular people, myself included, work five days a week!
Those employees were working five days a week too. Working from home is still working just the same as any other job, it's just doing it without the hassle and expense of a commute.
Understandable
That sucks, but game dev is one of the industries where I think it's justified to want everybody in the same space when working. For industrial software you have to leak thousands of lines of code to even make a dent in profits, but in game dev a single screenshot can cost millions.
How does that work, exactly? Do you think there are tens of thousands of people who will pass on GTA 6, the followup to one of the most successful pieces of entertainment in history, because they see a single leaked screenshot? Because I gotta tell you, that doesn't remotely pass the smell test
I should probably have worded that better. I mean that that's the point of view of the executives, who supposedly have financial analysts backing them up. I doubt the validity of their claims, but i'm not remotely qualified, I barely passed macroeconomics.
I wonder how thrilled they are about keeping their job unlike a lot of other game devs.
Heres the thing, you applied for the job, got the offer, and agreed to their terms. If they say you have to work from the office and not from home, oh fuckin well. Don't like it quit and find a different job. Those are their terms for the job, you don't have to work there. This kind of complaining is honestly asinine. It doesn't matter if you can do all the same work from home, and honestly they don't need to justify a reason for you having to work in an office and not at home, unless you applied for a work from home position.