A new interview with a former Rockstar employee sheds some new light on how the company’s workplace environment had grown toxic around the time they released Grand Theft Auto V.
Jonathan Gwyn was interviewed on Kiwi Talks about his work in the industry, and much of the discussion ended up being about his time on Rockstar. Gwyn was a senior environment artist, which even he says is boring, but the Grand Theft Auto fandom is so rabid that even he’s pretty astounded at how popular it is.
We’ll jump straight to the things Gwyn says about working at Rockstar and on Grand Theft Auto V (edited for clarity):
“I don’t want to diss them, but there’s people there that have a very aggressive managing style. And they make so much money that there’s really no incentive for them to change the way they do things.
They made a billion dollars on the first day when GTA 5 came out. The game cost $ 250 million, and they made that up in the game three times in the first day.
It’s not so much the company that was bumming me out; it was the attitude of the people in the company.”
This is the big insight we got on how things were going on at the company. While we had saw news and rumors about the Housers and other executives at the top, Gwyn felt that the company culture had become terrible even at the lower levels, among the mid-level managers like the people in charge of him.
Surprisingly enough, Gwyn also talks about meeting the Housers, and finding that them cordial. He doesn’t dispute any of the things claimed about them, but simply points out that wasn’t his experience, and he really didn’t work directly under them or interacted with them for very long.
But Gwyn also talked about feeling the need to leave this admittedly high paying job, for his peace of mind:
“People around me, complaining so much and they were so sour on things. After a time, you can’t spend eight to ten hours a day, five days a week with people that just don’t like what they’re doing.
A lot of people were leftovers from when there was the huge controversy about overtime and the Rockstar wives.
So, I ended up getting that job I was talking about at Qualcomm, and I went over there. They weren’t happy when I left, but you gotta do what I gotta do.
It’s one of those cases where I voluntarily left, and people would say, you’re crazy, why would you leave Rockstar? You know, I just felt like I needed to get away from some of the atmosphere.”
We had recently reported on how analysts believe Grand Theft Auto VI will be one of the biggest releases in this generation, but how this game gets made matters. Rockstar very publicly mandated a return to office to their workers, in spite of complaints from said workers.
Fans speculating on possible delays for the title are not being helpful in this situation. If they want Grand Theft Auto VI to come out right, they should have the developers in mind, and the immense pressure they are under at this moment to deliver.
