GTA 5: ex-Rockstar Games reveals the terrible work culture that existed during development

Jonathan Gwyn, former Senior Environment Artist at RockstarGamesdescribed his experience within the company at the time of the development of GTA V. Gwyn worked on the game from 2011 to 2012, creating deserts, roads, tracks, mountains and more, and spoke of a terrifying work culture, which at the time caused quite a few problems within the company and which has been reformed in recent years .

Aggression and negativity

The occasion for his revelations was an interview granted to Reece Reilly for the KIWI TALKZ channel, partly dedicated to dialogue with developers.

The interview lasts about an hour and touches on many topics, but the Rockstar Games part is particularly interesting, because Gwyn explained that he left the GTA studio because of the people and culture around him.

Meanwhile, he explained how everything in GTA V was placed by hand and how at the time the development of Red Dead Redemption 2 had just begun. Then he talked about his experience, talking about people with a decidedly aggressive management style, who were also not very motivated. to change register given the amount of money made.

It is well known that the working culture at Rockstar Games during the development of GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 was brutal. According to him, however, it didn’t just depend on the company, but on the people: “It wasn’t so much the company that was making me depressed, but rather the attitude of the people within it, those around me; they complained so much and were so negative. about things and after a while you know you can’t spend eight or ten hours a day, five days a week, with people who just don’t love what they’re doing.

A lot of people were left over from the time of the big overtime controversy and Rockstar wives and all that stuff, so eventually I got that job I was talking about at Qualcomm and moved there. They weren’t happy when I left, but you know, you gotta do what you gotta do.”

So we’re not just talking about very aggressive management, but also about a team that didn’t like what they were doing. Let’s hope that things have changed with GTA 6.