Red Dead Redemption which had topped the sales charts for the month of May having sold around 1.5 million copies and scoring some impressive reviews from critics wasn’t enough for mega publiser Rockstar games. Sources close to the San Diego development team have said a significant amount of the studio was laid off on Wednesday. Close to 40 employees were said to have been let go.
During the development of the game, wives of Rockstar San Diego employees had collected themselves allegedly claiming that Rockstar San Diego employees have been in a perpetual state of “crunch†since March of 2009, employees were diagnosed with symptoms of depression and that mandatory work hours were extended to nearly 12 hours a day, six days a week.
Steve Martin, Studio Manager at Rockstar San Diego, has responded to Kotaku saying,
As is typical with game development, our team sizes have always fluctuated over the course of the development cycle. As Rockstar San Diego transitions from the launch of Red Dead Redemption onto future projects, we are realigning our resources in order to continue to develop games as effectively as possible. We are ensuring that all employees who are affected by these changes are being treated with care. While we have no announcements to make regarding a sequel to Red Dead Redemption, the team here are hard at work on the development of downloadable content for the game.
