It appears that Dan Houser just confirmed some long standing rumors about Red Dead Redemption 2.
In an interview with Lex Fridman, Dan said this:
You know, I think with Red Dead 2, when, you know, we were behind schedule. We were over budget so much I didn’t want to think about it. And you’re making a game about a cowboy dying of TB and the game’s not coming together.
Turns out a lot of people doubt you at that moment. It’s not that fun. So I think that was a lot of pressure.
While this seems to be a throwaway line in a larger interview, Dan just corroborated a rumor that fans thought was long debunked.
The Original Rumor
Cade Onder of the website ComicBook.com brought light that this was an old rumor. The original post on Reddit seems to have already disappeared, so it’s a minor miracle that we can even still talk about it now.
Fortunately, a copy of that rumor was retrieved and is in this more recent reddit. This rumor can’t be newer than September 2017. However, we can’t seem to confirm the original posting date.
We’ll quote the salient parts of the rumor below:
The last I heard, which was a few months ago, the game was kind of stuck in development hell of sorts. Then team kept remaking a vertical slice demo for the leaders of rockstar and they aren’t impressed… They didn’t find it different enough or innovative enough. Hopefully they got out of that rut.
I’ve also heard that since gta5 morale at rockstar SD had been bad. Long timers are quitting. Lots of turnover. Lots of frustration. That’s all I can remember off hand.”
What Happened When They Were Making Red Dead Redemption 2?
Rockstar started work on Red Dead Redemption 2 shortly after the release of the first game in 2010. They announced the title in 2016 but would not release it until October 2018.
Around the time of the game’s release, Dan Houser made an poorly worded statement in an interview that created a controversy for the whole company.
The Past Reporting On Red Dead Redemption 2’s Crunch
In an interview around the game’s launch, Houser claimed that the developers worked 100 hour work weeks several times throughout the year. This led to justified concern and also worries that Rockstar had been forcing developers to crunch on the game.
Dan clarified almost immediately that he was only referring to the game’s senior writing team, and this period was not prior to launch. Afterwards, Rockstar remarkably chose to free their developers to talk about their experience in social media.
In the fallout of this controversy, we found out that Rockstar did not require anyone to work 100-hour weeks. However, there were issues with overtime and crunch.
We know today that Rockstar has changed policies completely so that there would no longer be mandatory crunch. Some fans may complain that that’s the reason the game got delayed.
But we think most fans will agree that this is the right thing to do. It is remarkable that Dan was willing to speak openly about this at all. But clearly, there was nothing here that we didn’t already know about at this point.
