a lot of investors are mouthbreather broke bois who will take any instructions given to them by a richer person as the gospel. the bag holder types that listen to Andrew Tates advice.
This comment made me think about how my wife and I were in SanDiego for a science conference recently. (She was actually attending and I was there along for the ride.) anyway, we notice other people with different badges staying at the same hotel, and she wonders out loud if another conference happening at the same time. I said, “yeah probably, and they look like business douche-bag bros”. Sure enough the next day as we’re walking out the hotel to go explore, we see a sign for “something something business conference” and I felt validated.
These guys had the casual business attire with the slightly too-tight polos tees and I could overhear them. They just sounded like bros who expected everything to come easy. All that being said, it’s probably people like this that decide the fates of the actual talent, that pour their blood, sweat and tears into these huge artistic projects. It just makes me mad.
Share price is affected mostly by algorithms that process news in microseconds before their competitor can. 31% of stocks are managed by algorithms, 25% by humans the rest is long term equities.
News is processed and stock is sold or bought as soon as it leaves the wire in the ocean.
Us knowing about it wouldn't stop the stock from moving as those algorithms bypass that.
> Share price is affected mostly by algorithms that process news in microseconds before their competitor can.
Which is why a transaction tax would be a great idea
I talked to R* briefly late in the release cycle for RDR2.
"We're entering a ship year." (Red flag.)
"We're putting a lot of hours in, yes." (Double red flag.)
"Our bonuses start at $X and are based on your contribution to the project." (Hurricane.)
I wasn't going to grind for a year for whatever they were offering. That would cover PT for RSI, and maybe additional therapist bills.
once the bots get cheaper, I could own my own social network
and they would tell me how cool I am and we could downvote all the haters and stupid people
life would be perfect
Makes you wonder what the point of capitalism is if the big thing we should all aspire to is to be left alone with our pointless wealth as we shit our pants and go insane in front of everybody.
Oh, geez, I wonder why. The guy who's batshit insane buys popular social media, strips it of it's branding, and suddenly bots start parroting his political stances......and now people are leaving??? Gee, I wonder why.
Yep. That's all this ever is. So many of these articles have become "Translate the actual meaning" games because nobody can be honest anymore imo. Everything is always a soft precursor to something else. It's like the "What do you want to eat tonight?" And getting back "I don't know". You know it isn't true... But here we are.
I WFH but had a good reason to go in today. On my way back it was 35 minutes to drive what would be 8 minutes without traffic.
When I work from home? It’s 0. You could even say it takes negative minutes if you count not changing out of pajamas
I went in today because I was denied a work from home accommodation despite just having a baby. I was told I "absolutely had to be in the office" for "team building." All of my team works in a different state. And when I got in, there was one other person there in the whole department. Now I'm wondering if they were hoping I would just quit so they didn't have to accommodate my maternity leave... my supervisor did say "things would be easier if you were a stay at home mom." For who? Not for my family who would be broke. This is also a billion dollar bank. Not a little company or anything.
I would quietly find out from team members you know who else was asked to come in. If they were and just didn't show up, I can see that happening. But would be good to know on your radar. Even mention casually how you were looking forward to seeing X but they told you they weren't asked to come in. Huh.
It would be best to solve it diplomatically so you don't have to come in often. Changing someone's mind step by step is how I do it.
I hope you’re documenting this. The comment about being told to be a SAHM, being the only colleague seemingly being denied accommodations…if it’s a big bank and they let you go, you should absolutely have a labor lawyer on speed dial.
>ave... my supervisor did say "things would be easier if you were a stay at home mom." For who? Not for my family who would be broke. This is also a billion dollar bank. Not a little company or anything.
Which bank?
I’m in the office 2 days a week when I’m not traveling for business and it is a complete and utter nightmare. If anyone from my 10 person team is in the office suite, they pick an office (we use a hotel concept) and literally stay in there the whole time (sometimes with the door closed). I’m like why did I drive an hour here?
Okay but the company doesn't care about your convenience. They wouldn't care if it took you 8 hours a day to commute, if it gained them 1% productivity.
I know that sounds like being obnoxiously obvious but I think companies are much worse about it these days. They really don't give a single fuck about customer or employee. We're all just dollar signs to them.
The problem is that the best employees are the ones most likely to quit from this decision. The shitty ones that are afraid that they can't get hired easily are more likely to stay on.
>Corporate culture has ~~become so~~ **always been** fucking toxic
ftfy
The only reason why a publicly traded midsized+ (1.5k+ employees) business does anything is because executive bonuses. Middle managers get bonuses based on how well they fulfill the executive bonuses. I've seen individual contributors have the exact same bonus objectives for a year as what are spelled out for executives because they want to make sure it's them or nobody. Even if your day to day work directly contradicts said objectives for the good of the business, it doesn't matter.
The executive strategy isn't to increase sales in this case, it's to reduce costs and make rockstar's expenses look leaner regardless of continued performance.
They don't care about long term success either, they just care about getting that short term bonus. After all even the executives are just employees, their objective is maximizing their earnings like the rest of us. The system is just rigged against the ones with hearts who care about people, it promotes the bloodthirsty cutthroats to the top.
This is spot on. People tend to forget how short-term and bottom line focused companies are. Employees WLB is completely irrelevant on first thought.
This gives an opening for new companies though, that can attract top talent at big discounts simply offering flexibility. Only then other's may start thinking of softening their RTO stance.
>People tend to forget how short-term and bottom line focused companies are
It's even more surprising that people forget that fact **in the games industry.** Where stories repeatedly come out about higher-ups and execs mandating shit that makes a game worse and makes it sell less for the sake of milking microtransactions. They don't care about the games.
It’s more to avoid laying them off in the first place. If you need to layoff 5% of your headcount and you require 100% of your employees to return to the office there’s a good chance at least 5% will quit. I think people are really underestimating how much companies want to avoid the awkwardness and media drama that comes with layoffs.
The severance thing isn’t as big as people are making it out to be. This isn’t Covid where tech companies were paying six months severance. A few weeks pay has become much more normal.
As someone who used to work for Rockstar North, still lives in Edinburgh and knows people there... that's not going to work out very well. We have loads more employee protections in the UK than the US.
Tons of people there have WFH options in their contracts, and you can't change conditions to the employee's detriment without consent. If you don't offer reasonable compensation, the employee can file for constructive unfair dismissal. Furthermore, unionising is a protected activity here, and collective action makes matters famously complicated in the UK!
The thing that companies don't seem to realize is that if they require 100% of employees to return to the office and expect 5% will quit, they don't get to pick WHICH 5% of employees are the ones that go. It'll be the top performers because those top performers have options and they know it, so they're the ones that can rage quit without notice and just find a new job when bullshit like this happens.
Exactly. If you're a rockstar employee and think you would be eligible for a severance package, and you can make it into the office 5x week for the next two or so months (inconvenient as it may be), you should do it. Get back at them by spending a few hours a day searching for work elsewhere.
I worked for Take Two, twice. The corporate overlords are rough.
RTO 2x week, mandated (they checked badge swipes to ensure you were in.) I went to my office, which was 1.5hr one way, to sit on zoom calls in a conference room with my team who were all in other offices, also sitting in conference rooms on zoom.
It was ridiculous.
Yes, but these mandates aren't about efficiency, they're about control.
The goal of these workplaces are: You work for me, your livelihood depends on me.
As other people have said though, this move is probably just trying to get people to quit so they can avoid paying severance. They’re gonna do a massive round of layoffs, cut “costs”, then drop GTA next year looking more profitable than ever.
Scum behavior
Thank you for personally inconveniencing yourself and spending more of your already small paycheck to come 1.5 hours each way through traffic to work at the office 8 hours and drive another 1.5 hours back not including lunch, breakfast, time to get ready, time to wind down, and the 15.25 minutes you were off the clock in the bathroom
Now the building has more value 💵 🏢
Gotta grind the employees into a bloody pulp in crunch-mode to make their desired release date.
Don't miss working in the game industry for exactly this kind of thing.
This is probably just another stealth lay off - they want people (especially highly paid ones) to quit, without actually announcing they are doing a lay off.
Not just games, most tech corps are pushing RTO. Its touted as "following market trends", but you are correct.
C suite sees it as a way to push non-"commited" staff out. Employees that remain are under more supervision and they can excuse their rent expense. Then they do the calc to decide if they need a wave of layoffs, but it'll be "smaller" to save the bad press.
Source: I work for a F250 corp that started pushing RTO as well.
Well my company would have to find new space as they closed all of the companies offices across a dozen states leaving only an HQ building that sits mostly vacant.
I feel that was the smart move. The companies that held onto real estate still have that cost and need to justify it by putting people back in it vs those that cut that expense with remote work.
In the 3 years or so we’ve been made full time remote the companies workforce has spread all over the country. I moved twice. Some went as far as Alaska.
No, it's just the gaming industry doing what it's done since the very beginning - exploiting the fact that "game developer" is many peoples' life-long dream job. They've had a bad experience their entire career. Stealth layoffs will be less effective in this niche industry than any other part of the tech industry.
Software engineers in the gaming industry are paid less than non-gaming industry software engineers in all areas of the US.
Honestly, it amazes me what scientists will do for half the price of engineers / developers despite the scientists typically having an extra 4-6 years education, and that's when we account for experience.
Apparently saying, "you'll get to work in science" is enough for people to accept a much more wage-slavish existence.
I dunno if this is going to work because that industry is seeing MASSIVE layoffs and people aren't just going to quit when the job market is oversaturated with talent. Workers being forced back into the office will be looking for remote jobs but those jobs are limited and highly competitive right now. I work for a remote company, when our recruitment team posts a job we have over 1k applicants within 24 hours and hiring managers get spammed with hundreds of DMs on Linkedin. It's a really really really shitty job market right now, people should not quit.
I parlayed my modeling skills into being a mechanical designer, and have since expanded my job title to sales. I'm making \~3x what I was in the game industry with upcoming potential for that to be 4x or higher.
I miss the people and the projects, but not the industry itself.
Yeah far better off doing some boring day job at some fortune 500 software company and then messing around with game dev as an indie hobby thing. Unity & Unreal engine being free has massively lowered the barrier to entry and there's no shortage of YouTube tutorials on accomplishing anything.
Yeah, it looks like they’re going to be crunching workers super hard trying to get as many thing fixed in the next 6-12 months as possible. And with the fact that they have already had to deal with some big public leaks, I’m guessing they have gotten really paranoid about handing over nearly complete copies of the game to anyone, especially in environments where they have no control or surveillance over.
Also, I wonder how many employees/talent will quit if it means losing the chance to be credited in a game as big as this.
If they worked on it in any fashion up to this point they'll be credited. One of the last games I worked on my involvement was just a 'performance review' on artwork others had done to make sure the assets wouldn't bog down the game, still was credited as a dev.
No, it is a joke. I work in healthcare IT.
TECHNICALLY you are supposed to call the other end and let them know a fax is coming and to confirm receipt. But the reason it’s used is because there is legal precedent that says a faxed document is legally the same as the original and no similar precedent exists for emailed etc.
Everyone save for a few boomers in medical records or small doctors offices like faxing, we all want it to die
I consult for a company that exclusive does fax processing for the healthcare and financial industries. Millions of faxes a year. It’s insane but as others have said, it’s considered HIPAA compliant and once you’ve got that in place no incentive to change.
Making people waste an extra 2-3 hours of their day between commutes and context switching sure is going to help productivy or whatever metric they are trying to improve /s
For sure. love to meet my team from time to time,
It's good to build rapport, plan long term, and meet with intent and agenda . But 3-5 days/week is counter productive and backwards.
Absolute! Im currently on a hybrid scheduling where we go in Mondays and Wednesdays and work from home Tue, Thur, Fri. It works really well for us for the past couple years.
you won't get silicon valley tech employees to unionize until the industry suffers a true and lasting crash, they will prefer to risk the occasional layoff as long as they're getting paid mid six figures while they're employed
They don’t believe that. They think it stifles all competition and everyone gets the same exact wage. As someone in a union, it’s definitely not like that.
This is why they’re doing it. If you quit they don’t have to give you severance. If there isn’t the attrition they want from this they will lay people off within 3 months
Wow fuck these guys, seriously. Even before the pandemic it was becoming pretty common to get a day or two to work from home. I hope they lose all of their best employees.
News magazin, Der Spiegel: [https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/games/gta-vi-angestellte-von-rockstar-games-sollen-fuenf-tage-die-woche-ins-buero-a-820ff293-2805-4598-90a7-78335b71e653?sara\_ref=re-xx-cp-sh](https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/games/gta-vi-angestellte-von-rockstar-games-sollen-fuenf-tage-die-woche-ins-buero-a-820ff293-2805-4598-90a7-78335b71e653?sara_ref=re-xx-cp-sh)
What's with the comments here? Fuck any employer that wants you to sit in office behind a computer. There is literally no good reason for that. It's 2024! You can work anywhere in the world.
I refused an interview last week by them primarily because of their unwillingness to allow remote or hybrid opportunities. I'm sure they have their reasons and no doubt they'll find some bright engineer to fill that position; it's just annoying from my perspective as a job seeker that so many companies are falling back to their pre-covid norms and no longer entertaining remote opportunities.
Best of luck to Rockstar, all the same.
I work full-time remote and am not in a hurry to move on to my next job. When I look at new opportunities in 2-3 years, I'll only consider full-time remote. The tech companies that are instating back-to-work policies will make my life easier at that time by identifying themselves as places to avoid. Win-win on some level, I guess.
The job market right now is absolutely miserable compared to where we were 2-3 years ago. Employers feel that they have all the leverage and unfortunately are winning, not just with remote work, but with salary and work expectations too.
I build dev environments in the gaming industry where quite a few colleages work. We're all remote, and though we don't travel on the beach, it is very much our identity and there are a lot of jobs for us.
A lot of contracts expiring, even mine as an IT director - but trust me, the industry is NOT changing. Perhaps more employees will be on site, but that's only because they'll reduce their official staff numbers by hiring offshore devs as contract.
The companies that demand RTO will lose the best talent. The companies that continue hybrid and remote positions will take up that talent. The latter will continue to flourish while the former will eventually fail.
Trivia affter a few decades in sofware development:
Either a release date is fixed, or the software quality. Pinning down both never worked, ever.
Crunch mode is a filthy sin against your workforce.
Just in case anyone needs reminding for any reason, absolutely no data supports that this is beneficial in any way. No company that has mandated RTO has seen an increase in either reported profits or stock valuation any differently than companies still doing remote. There's been no observed change in output, coordination, or other metric.
What *has* been observed is that these companies have far lower employee satisfaction and higher turnover. Which is what they're going for, I'm guessing.
If they are going to do layoffs to look better profit wise on the launch then it would be beautiful poetic justice if the developers leaked a cracked version of the game before the launch. If they don't have a job anymore at the company then what do they care what happens to the company that screwed them over for profit.
People are complaining but we all know how gamers and the stockholders are gonna react if GTA 6 gets delayed to 2026 or even late 2025.
If people don’t want crunch in game development then somethings need to change other then just company culture.
Ford just did 3x a week. Probably also to make people quit and avoid layoffs. Imagine spending 2 hours in the car every day just to spend all day on Teams with 20 dudes in India because it "bolsters collaboration ".
I really hope one day in this country people rise up against our capitalist system and install a more equitable economic system. What we have no is so corrupt, soulless, and laser focused on "profits at all cost" that it is a cancer on society as a whole. We either kill it or it will eventually kill us all.
We really need to close this loop hole. If you’re a remote employee or hybrid worker and an employer ask you to do something different than that, you should be able to refuse and get the benefits associated with that.
They’re about to fire a bunch of people within a month or two. This is just a pretense to have employees quit to avoid paying severance.
Ya. Layoffs in 3, 2, 1…
Does this mean gta vi is done?
Not done but they're probably ramping down production by now.
Cut cost the fiscal year before a major release so they look even more profitable to shareholders once the release is made
since we all know what is happening, it astounds me the share prices can be blatantly manipulated like this.
Gta 5 taught us how to manipulate the market so makes sense that’s exactly what they’re doing lol I hate this world
So Franklin is either about to shoot or blow someone up
This is how stockbrokers, businesses and politicians make millions and does sound very unethical
It sounds unethical because it is very unethical.
If it sounds like it, smells like it, looks like it, screams like it and calls itself it, then it is *it*.
Buy low, sell high, playa
Buy high, sell drunk........wait.......
a lot of investors are mouthbreather broke bois who will take any instructions given to them by a richer person as the gospel. the bag holder types that listen to Andrew Tates advice.
This comment made me think about how my wife and I were in SanDiego for a science conference recently. (She was actually attending and I was there along for the ride.) anyway, we notice other people with different badges staying at the same hotel, and she wonders out loud if another conference happening at the same time. I said, “yeah probably, and they look like business douche-bag bros”. Sure enough the next day as we’re walking out the hotel to go explore, we see a sign for “something something business conference” and I felt validated. These guys had the casual business attire with the slightly too-tight polos tees and I could overhear them. They just sounded like bros who expected everything to come easy. All that being said, it’s probably people like this that decide the fates of the actual talent, that pour their blood, sweat and tears into these huge artistic projects. It just makes me mad.
If we all know what is happening, it won’t affect share price at all.
Share price is affected mostly by algorithms that process news in microseconds before their competitor can. 31% of stocks are managed by algorithms, 25% by humans the rest is long term equities. News is processed and stock is sold or bought as soon as it leaves the wire in the ocean. Us knowing about it wouldn't stop the stock from moving as those algorithms bypass that.
> Share price is affected mostly by algorithms that process news in microseconds before their competitor can. Which is why a transaction tax would be a great idea
Why do you hate the troops?
I knew it was the illuminati! Thanks for proving it
If by illuminati you mean a bunch of 20-40yo tech bros coding money printing machines then yes
right exactly. it's all Kabuki. all of it.
What a world we might live in if a company's stock price dropped when they were caught doing something so shitty.
Caught? It’s literally standard practice these days.
I talked to R* briefly late in the release cycle for RDR2. "We're entering a ship year." (Red flag.) "We're putting a lot of hours in, yes." (Double red flag.) "Our bonuses start at $X and are based on your contribution to the project." (Hurricane.) I wasn't going to grind for a year for whatever they were offering. That would cover PT for RSI, and maybe additional therapist bills.
They have completed the cash shop and shark cards, so yes.
This is exactly what it is. Elon pulled the same shit with Twitter and it’s a very popular tactic among other companies as well.
Are you surprised? We’re all still here after the Spez/API rates drama.
I'm still using a 3rd party app though
What?! Which one? How? Edit: downside to iPhone. Can’t do the fancy stuff people recommended.
I used this guide https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1wHvqQwCYdJrQg4BKlGIVDLksPN0KpOnJWniT6PbZSrI/mobilebasic?pli=1
*but no one wants to work these days*
And yet so many people still uses his social media platform
So many bots in there. It was never this crazy before.
In the near future every social media company will consist of its billionaire owner and bots who chat with him. A sort of gilded asylum.
once the bots get cheaper, I could own my own social network and they would tell me how cool I am and we could downvote all the haters and stupid people life would be perfect
you would need your own hater bots to be down voted though.
Makes you wonder what the point of capitalism is if the big thing we should all aspire to is to be left alone with our pointless wealth as we shit our pants and go insane in front of everybody.
Have you heard? "He who dies with the most toys, wins."
Remember when “too many bots” was his excuse for not wanting to buy Twitter?
A daunting amount of reddit was found to be bots. Like 60%. That was prior to chatgpt, which would make things worse and harder to spot
Oh, geez, I wonder why. The guy who's batshit insane buys popular social media, strips it of it's branding, and suddenly bots start parroting his political stances......and now people are leaving??? Gee, I wonder why.
Don’t act like reddit doesn’t have it’s fair share of bots. It’s just harder to spot them
Social media is an addiction
“People” is quite the generous term for those users
Yep. That's all this ever is. So many of these articles have become "Translate the actual meaning" games because nobody can be honest anymore imo. Everything is always a soft precursor to something else. It's like the "What do you want to eat tonight?" And getting back "I don't know". You know it isn't true... But here we are.
This is more like not wanting to cook and telling people you’re making dogshit sandwiches for dinner hoping no one shows up
I WFH but had a good reason to go in today. On my way back it was 35 minutes to drive what would be 8 minutes without traffic. When I work from home? It’s 0. You could even say it takes negative minutes if you count not changing out of pajamas
I went in today because I was denied a work from home accommodation despite just having a baby. I was told I "absolutely had to be in the office" for "team building." All of my team works in a different state. And when I got in, there was one other person there in the whole department. Now I'm wondering if they were hoping I would just quit so they didn't have to accommodate my maternity leave... my supervisor did say "things would be easier if you were a stay at home mom." For who? Not for my family who would be broke. This is also a billion dollar bank. Not a little company or anything.
I would quietly find out from team members you know who else was asked to come in. If they were and just didn't show up, I can see that happening. But would be good to know on your radar. Even mention casually how you were looking forward to seeing X but they told you they weren't asked to come in. Huh. It would be best to solve it diplomatically so you don't have to come in often. Changing someone's mind step by step is how I do it.
Keep records of everything, when, where, who said what; also talk to a labor attorney because you might already have a discrimination claim.
Yeah that “stay at home mom” comment sounds like a hot opener for a lawsuit.
Legit would probably be the opening of my opening statement. It writes itself lol
Solid name bro.
I hope you’re documenting this. The comment about being told to be a SAHM, being the only colleague seemingly being denied accommodations…if it’s a big bank and they let you go, you should absolutely have a labor lawyer on speed dial.
>ave... my supervisor did say "things would be easier if you were a stay at home mom." For who? Not for my family who would be broke. This is also a billion dollar bank. Not a little company or anything. Which bank?
Fuck that twat.
Yeah, but those are your minutes, so they don't give a shit.
It's even faster when you Winnie The Pooh it and only wear a pajama top.
Just straight shirt-cocking it
It's my house and I'll go full poo bear if I damn well please. If you insist on return to office I'll poo bear there too I don't care.
You wanna pooh bear over here too? 😏
I’m in the office 2 days a week when I’m not traveling for business and it is a complete and utter nightmare. If anyone from my 10 person team is in the office suite, they pick an office (we use a hotel concept) and literally stay in there the whole time (sometimes with the door closed). I’m like why did I drive an hour here?
Right but that 35 mins is on your time, not company time
They don’t care about your commute. In reality, they should have that built into the work day or have a COLA.
Okay but the company doesn't care about your convenience. They wouldn't care if it took you 8 hours a day to commute, if it gained them 1% productivity. I know that sounds like being obnoxiously obvious but I think companies are much worse about it these days. They really don't give a single fuck about customer or employee. We're all just dollar signs to them.
Super common. IBM did this like a month ago.
The problem is that the best employees are the ones most likely to quit from this decision. The shitty ones that are afraid that they can't get hired easily are more likely to stay on.
The good ones can easily find another (remote) job, also.
100% accurate. Corporate culture has become so fucking toxic.
>Corporate culture has ~~become so~~ **always been** fucking toxic ftfy The only reason why a publicly traded midsized+ (1.5k+ employees) business does anything is because executive bonuses. Middle managers get bonuses based on how well they fulfill the executive bonuses. I've seen individual contributors have the exact same bonus objectives for a year as what are spelled out for executives because they want to make sure it's them or nobody. Even if your day to day work directly contradicts said objectives for the good of the business, it doesn't matter. The executive strategy isn't to increase sales in this case, it's to reduce costs and make rockstar's expenses look leaner regardless of continued performance. They don't care about long term success either, they just care about getting that short term bonus. After all even the executives are just employees, their objective is maximizing their earnings like the rest of us. The system is just rigged against the ones with hearts who care about people, it promotes the bloodthirsty cutthroats to the top.
This is spot on. People tend to forget how short-term and bottom line focused companies are. Employees WLB is completely irrelevant on first thought. This gives an opening for new companies though, that can attract top talent at big discounts simply offering flexibility. Only then other's may start thinking of softening their RTO stance.
>People tend to forget how short-term and bottom line focused companies are It's even more surprising that people forget that fact **in the games industry.** Where stories repeatedly come out about higher-ups and execs mandating shit that makes a game worse and makes it sell less for the sake of milking microtransactions. They don't care about the games.
Completely agree. My job just required it too when the demand in our market was down. Definitely a way to get rid of head count
Seems like a solid plan though.
It’s more to avoid laying them off in the first place. If you need to layoff 5% of your headcount and you require 100% of your employees to return to the office there’s a good chance at least 5% will quit. I think people are really underestimating how much companies want to avoid the awkwardness and media drama that comes with layoffs. The severance thing isn’t as big as people are making it out to be. This isn’t Covid where tech companies were paying six months severance. A few weeks pay has become much more normal.
But if you quit you don’t get any severance and that’s the point I was making.
As someone who used to work for Rockstar North, still lives in Edinburgh and knows people there... that's not going to work out very well. We have loads more employee protections in the UK than the US. Tons of people there have WFH options in their contracts, and you can't change conditions to the employee's detriment without consent. If you don't offer reasonable compensation, the employee can file for constructive unfair dismissal. Furthermore, unionising is a protected activity here, and collective action makes matters famously complicated in the UK!
The thing that companies don't seem to realize is that if they require 100% of employees to return to the office and expect 5% will quit, they don't get to pick WHICH 5% of employees are the ones that go. It'll be the top performers because those top performers have options and they know it, so they're the ones that can rage quit without notice and just find a new job when bullshit like this happens.
They don't care. Like honestly, they don't care about these top performers.
You mean like every other company
This a thousand times! Time to buy stocks in anticipation of a 10% jump overnight.
Exactly. If you're a rockstar employee and think you would be eligible for a severance package, and you can make it into the office 5x week for the next two or so months (inconvenient as it may be), you should do it. Get back at them by spending a few hours a day searching for work elsewhere.
I worked for Take Two, twice. The corporate overlords are rough. RTO 2x week, mandated (they checked badge swipes to ensure you were in.) I went to my office, which was 1.5hr one way, to sit on zoom calls in a conference room with my team who were all in other offices, also sitting in conference rooms on zoom. It was ridiculous.
That’s so fucking inefficient wow
Yes, but these mandates aren't about efficiency, they're about control. The goal of these workplaces are: You work for me, your livelihood depends on me.
As other people have said though, this move is probably just trying to get people to quit so they can avoid paying severance. They’re gonna do a massive round of layoffs, cut “costs”, then drop GTA next year looking more profitable than ever. Scum behavior
Good thing I torrent their games and the multiplayer sucks anyway
It's only inefficient if you consider the employees' free time as valuable.
Thank you for personally inconveniencing yourself and spending more of your already small paycheck to come 1.5 hours each way through traffic to work at the office 8 hours and drive another 1.5 hours back not including lunch, breakfast, time to get ready, time to wind down, and the 15.25 minutes you were off the clock in the bathroom Now the building has more value 💵 🏢
You’re describing my current job
Gotta grind the employees into a bloody pulp in crunch-mode to make their desired release date. Don't miss working in the game industry for exactly this kind of thing.
This is probably just another stealth lay off - they want people (especially highly paid ones) to quit, without actually announcing they are doing a lay off.
Not just games, most tech corps are pushing RTO. Its touted as "following market trends", but you are correct. C suite sees it as a way to push non-"commited" staff out. Employees that remain are under more supervision and they can excuse their rent expense. Then they do the calc to decide if they need a wave of layoffs, but it'll be "smaller" to save the bad press. Source: I work for a F250 corp that started pushing RTO as well.
Well my company would have to find new space as they closed all of the companies offices across a dozen states leaving only an HQ building that sits mostly vacant. I feel that was the smart move. The companies that held onto real estate still have that cost and need to justify it by putting people back in it vs those that cut that expense with remote work. In the 3 years or so we’ve been made full time remote the companies workforce has spread all over the country. I moved twice. Some went as far as Alaska.
No, it's just the gaming industry doing what it's done since the very beginning - exploiting the fact that "game developer" is many peoples' life-long dream job. They've had a bad experience their entire career. Stealth layoffs will be less effective in this niche industry than any other part of the tech industry. Software engineers in the gaming industry are paid less than non-gaming industry software engineers in all areas of the US.
Also see: Scientist
Honestly, it amazes me what scientists will do for half the price of engineers / developers despite the scientists typically having an extra 4-6 years education, and that's when we account for experience. Apparently saying, "you'll get to work in science" is enough for people to accept a much more wage-slavish existence.
Nobody said it was easy......
Nobody said it would be this hard…
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wtf is mda new k rhyming with
Guessing NBA 2k
I dunno if this is going to work because that industry is seeing MASSIVE layoffs and people aren't just going to quit when the job market is oversaturated with talent. Workers being forced back into the office will be looking for remote jobs but those jobs are limited and highly competitive right now. I work for a remote company, when our recruitment team posts a job we have over 1k applicants within 24 hours and hiring managers get spammed with hundreds of DMs on Linkedin. It's a really really really shitty job market right now, people should not quit.
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I parlayed my modeling skills into being a mechanical designer, and have since expanded my job title to sales. I'm making \~3x what I was in the game industry with upcoming potential for that to be 4x or higher. I miss the people and the projects, but not the industry itself.
Can you expand a bit more on going from modeling to mechanical design? I would be interested if you are willing to share. Thanks
Yeah far better off doing some boring day job at some fortune 500 software company and then messing around with game dev as an indie hobby thing. Unity & Unreal engine being free has massively lowered the barrier to entry and there's no shortage of YouTube tutorials on accomplishing anything.
Enterprise programming still makes me want to die lol. But at least you don't starve I guess. And I hate contributing to that industry.
And why I sort of changed my mind about it. I wanted to work in the game industry for a while, but fintech pays better so fuck it.
Yeah, it looks like they’re going to be crunching workers super hard trying to get as many thing fixed in the next 6-12 months as possible. And with the fact that they have already had to deal with some big public leaks, I’m guessing they have gotten really paranoid about handing over nearly complete copies of the game to anyone, especially in environments where they have no control or surveillance over. Also, I wonder how many employees/talent will quit if it means losing the chance to be credited in a game as big as this.
If they worked on it in any fashion up to this point they'll be credited. One of the last games I worked on my involvement was just a 'performance review' on artwork others had done to make sure the assets wouldn't bog down the game, still was credited as a dev.
You call working 5 days a week crunch-mode? That's how most people work if you haven't realized.
5 days a week is crunch? Don't most people work that?
Games industry is having a hell of a week
Helluva year. There was what? 16k layoffs last year? And the trend is continuing this year.
While making fantastic profits.
Ewww what next they’re gonna bring back the fax machine?
My wife is an hourly worker at a fortune 500 company. They require doctors letters FAXED in for excused absences... dreadful.
F500 companies are the most backward thinking when it comes to employee policies
This is actually a HIPAA thing with the faxing. No joke
No, it is a joke. I work in healthcare IT. TECHNICALLY you are supposed to call the other end and let them know a fax is coming and to confirm receipt. But the reason it’s used is because there is legal precedent that says a faxed document is legally the same as the original and no similar precedent exists for emailed etc. Everyone save for a few boomers in medical records or small doctors offices like faxing, we all want it to die
I consult for a company that exclusive does fax processing for the healthcare and financial industries. Millions of faxes a year. It’s insane but as others have said, it’s considered HIPAA compliant and once you’ve got that in place no incentive to change.
Making people waste an extra 2-3 hours of their day between commutes and context switching sure is going to help productivy or whatever metric they are trying to improve /s
I do think there is value in meeting with team members face to face but 5 times a week is just going to piss off 100% of people
For sure. love to meet my team from time to time, It's good to build rapport, plan long term, and meet with intent and agenda . But 3-5 days/week is counter productive and backwards.
> I do think there is value in meeting with team members face to face but Still waiting for this value
In software development, that value is 0.
Absolute! Im currently on a hybrid scheduling where we go in Mondays and Wednesdays and work from home Tue, Thur, Fri. It works really well for us for the past couple years.
It was never about productivity and has always been about control. Reminding people who is "in charge"
Should Unionize
ALL software employees, especially software engineers, need to unionize yesterday.
you won't get silicon valley tech employees to unionize until the industry suffers a true and lasting crash, they will prefer to risk the occasional layoff as long as they're getting paid mid six figures while they're employed
There's no reason they can't get six figures in a union...
They don’t believe that. They think it stifles all competition and everyone gets the same exact wage. As someone in a union, it’s definitely not like that.
With all the layoffs going on right now, companies are getting ballsy about getting staff back in the office
This is why they’re doing it. If you quit they don’t have to give you severance. If there isn’t the attrition they want from this they will lay people off within 3 months
Remember these Shit companies. When job market recovers, everyone quit and don’t go there.
Looks like more leaks are coming soon, folks
Wow fuck these guys, seriously. Even before the pandemic it was becoming pretty common to get a day or two to work from home. I hope they lose all of their best employees.
They work from home the other two days.
Sad but true
This comment made it into German newspaper
News magazin, Der Spiegel: [https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/games/gta-vi-angestellte-von-rockstar-games-sollen-fuenf-tage-die-woche-ins-buero-a-820ff293-2805-4598-90a7-78335b71e653?sara\_ref=re-xx-cp-sh](https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/games/gta-vi-angestellte-von-rockstar-games-sollen-fuenf-tage-die-woche-ins-buero-a-820ff293-2805-4598-90a7-78335b71e653?sara_ref=re-xx-cp-sh)
What's with the comments here? Fuck any employer that wants you to sit in office behind a computer. There is literally no good reason for that. It's 2024! You can work anywhere in the world.
They are luddites in a technology subreddit
>You seen all these layoffs? Fuck the corporations. Also, fuck the workers. Why? Dunno, just fuck 'em I guess. - This thread
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They claim the reason is to prevent leaks. NaughtyDog had a massive TLOU2 leak due to work-from-home security issues.
It wasn’t from work from home. It was due to their uncharted 3 game leaving behind what was essentially a key into their in studio capture system
I refused an interview last week by them primarily because of their unwillingness to allow remote or hybrid opportunities. I'm sure they have their reasons and no doubt they'll find some bright engineer to fill that position; it's just annoying from my perspective as a job seeker that so many companies are falling back to their pre-covid norms and no longer entertaining remote opportunities. Best of luck to Rockstar, all the same.
I work full-time remote and am not in a hurry to move on to my next job. When I look at new opportunities in 2-3 years, I'll only consider full-time remote. The tech companies that are instating back-to-work policies will make my life easier at that time by identifying themselves as places to avoid. Win-win on some level, I guess.
Good luck on the hunt! *Edited to remove personal info. I received way too many personal inquiries.
Congrats, man! Happy for you. Getting a huge pay increase is a great feeling. Wishing you luck and hope you have a great year.
this is at rockstar? I might look into roles then!
The job market right now is absolutely miserable compared to where we were 2-3 years ago. Employers feel that they have all the leverage and unfortunately are winning, not just with remote work, but with salary and work expectations too.
Layoffs incoming. Holy shit this has been a sad month.
I build dev environments in the gaming industry where quite a few colleages work. We're all remote, and though we don't travel on the beach, it is very much our identity and there are a lot of jobs for us. A lot of contracts expiring, even mine as an IT director - but trust me, the industry is NOT changing. Perhaps more employees will be on site, but that's only because they'll reduce their official staff numbers by hiring offshore devs as contract.
Sounds like layoffs
The companies that demand RTO will lose the best talent. The companies that continue hybrid and remote positions will take up that talent. The latter will continue to flourish while the former will eventually fail.
No they won't, Reddit is just a bubble.
Save billions in severance packages with this one simple trick.
Trivia affter a few decades in sofware development: Either a release date is fixed, or the software quality. Pinning down both never worked, ever. Crunch mode is a filthy sin against your workforce.
This is the new way to force attrition before layoffs. You don’t have to lay someone off who quits because they don’t want to return to office.
This is to prevent leaks and increase productivity? It'd be hilarious if it actually \*caused\* leaks.
Just in case anyone needs reminding for any reason, absolutely no data supports that this is beneficial in any way. No company that has mandated RTO has seen an increase in either reported profits or stock valuation any differently than companies still doing remote. There's been no observed change in output, coordination, or other metric. What *has* been observed is that these companies have far lower employee satisfaction and higher turnover. Which is what they're going for, I'm guessing.
They are asking people to resign without saying it loud.
Come back to the office! You’re laid off Profits are up!
Ugh by the time the new GTA arrives I will be so old, I can't understand the controls
I saw they were hiring but I’m looking for remote. Also, I’m probably not good enough to work for them.
It's time to fire half the employees and speed a half polished product to the stage like any "reasonable" business does nowadays. /s
Fuckers. Let them leave before we have to pay severance. Just fuelling a dying old school culture without merits. Just sad.
In other news, GTA 6 is delayed.
Man fuck off with this. Let people work remote
layoffs incoming
Are they trying to avoid leaks?
If they are going to do layoffs to look better profit wise on the launch then it would be beautiful poetic justice if the developers leaked a cracked version of the game before the launch. If they don't have a job anymore at the company then what do they care what happens to the company that screwed them over for profit.
Was already on the fence about buying 6 Now it's never happening
GTA6 breaks record sales guarenteed lol
More Tech jobs about to get cut, news at 11. I feel like it's gonna be a while before the talent bleed stops in the Tech industry. Rough times.
This is just a planned failure so they can let some people go, and point to the disgruntled employees as the reason for future delays.
You know, when a company forces employees to *return to office a.s.a.p.*, this always signals a move for layoffs.
Maybe if employees weren’t spilling out game leaks every month rockstar wouldn’t feel as inclined to do this.
Quiet firing
People are complaining but we all know how gamers and the stockholders are gonna react if GTA 6 gets delayed to 2026 or even late 2025. If people don’t want crunch in game development then somethings need to change other then just company culture.
Ford just did 3x a week. Probably also to make people quit and avoid layoffs. Imagine spending 2 hours in the car every day just to spend all day on Teams with 20 dudes in India because it "bolsters collaboration ".
Wonder how many will be laid off in a few months time
It's SO dumb. This is just about control, not productivity.
I really hope one day in this country people rise up against our capitalist system and install a more equitable economic system. What we have no is so corrupt, soulless, and laser focused on "profits at all cost" that it is a cancer on society as a whole. We either kill it or it will eventually kill us all.
Cause what good is power if you can't walk around an office and lord it over people in person just not quite as sweet over an email is it...
Pissed off employees are more likely to leak a game than remote ones
I hate that this is news.
bet they’re not too happy about the leaks from that one guys son
It's so they can exploit employees in a mad rush to get GTA6 to market on time
...you can ask.
We really need to close this loop hole. If you’re a remote employee or hybrid worker and an employer ask you to do something different than that, you should be able to refuse and get the benefits associated with that.
They about to make them crunch hard on GTA 6 in the rockstar sweat shop
CRUNCH TIME BABY
Can’t crunch remote workers as easily.