* Rockstar Games announced on 28th February 2024, that workers will have to be
in the office 5 days a week from 15th April 2024 as remote working provisions
are withdrawn for the majority of staff.
* The news comes one year after 170 Rockstar Games workers in the UK signed a
petition opposing mandatory 3-day office work, in one of the UK games
industry’s biggest ever trade union actions.
* Workers belonging to the IWGB Game Workers Union accuse Rockstar of “broken
promises”, an
Everyone working a desk job with a computer in a physical office space together is just about as practical as a large group meeting where one or two people speak with no input from others.
Some people may need to be in an office/meeting sometimes but most do not usually and it’s a waste of time for the employee and a waste of money for the company. Just my opinion. ;)
It’s also basically a pay cut and a huge loss of benefits. What does Rockstar have to say about that?
Don’t most union workers currently work in jobs that don’t make sense to be remote like manufacturing? I wish there was a tech workers union that could push for this. I’m no union expert though
That would require that office workers unionize. Which, while hopefully being more common nowadays, is still seen as antithetical to most office workers.
I have a friend who works in the R* office in Massachusetts. The whole fucking company sounds like an abject nightmare to work for. Between the Stasi-esque HR lady that wanders around making notes of who is at their desks, to the legions of indoctrinated kool-aid drinkers, onto the just bizarre behind the scenes decisions and poor management.
He’s been dreading this announcement for a while now, and it may just be the one thing that will rip the scales off the otherwise creepily loyal workers.
Corporate America can absolutely be a cult. I’ve jumped around a fair bit, but you can always tell who the lifers are. Think the company is their savior, love the CEO even though they only met them once, go to all the functions, it’s sad to me. Most of those lifers were making much less than me because I jumped around to bump my salary, they are constantly passed over for promotions because “now just isn’t the time”, and usually they ignore their home life and never take PTO.
Tbh, game studios often require special equipment such as dev kits and high-end PCs for development. It makes sense that they might not want to send this equipment home, especially if it is an unreleased console"s dev kit. Game studios honestly seem more justified in not having WFH
Because every other dev here is saying that on-premise work isn’t actually needed for for devkits, and this guy has a definite vibe of “man, if I don’t defend the multi-million dollar game corporations, no one else will!”
Dev kits are accessed remotely. High-end PC
's are accessed remotely. Everything is done remotely. Hardware stays on-site.
Source? Am game dev who works remotely full-time, using 4K streaming.
Maybe the tools have changed since last I worked in the industry (or maybe we weren’t good at using all the features), but I never saw that anyone had remote access to the devkits. I could remote into my workstation, but it surely was not the best way to work.
Yeah, Microsoft Remote Desktop is relatively slow but works for most workflows.
For more demanding/responsive stuff with higher framerates (games), try Parsec (https://parsec.app/), it’s great. It has controller pass-through as well, at least for sony. I’m not sure about other brands.
Correct me if I am wrong, but this doesn’t seem to work for devkits? Like if I want to run something on a PS4 devkit, I can’t use parsec for that, can I?
The devkit software (has its own proprietary video streaming/control) would be on the on-site PC you are controlling remotely, using Parsec from anywhere, which would then control the PS4. Or you could use VPN from anywhere with the devkit software and connect remotely to the devkit directly.
The first scenario is ideal because you’re only using Parsec (or RDP) from your personal device, whereas the second scenario would require installing the devkit software on your personal PC, which in my opinion it’s not good to mix work/personal hardware. Your work might instead provide a computer to remote with, but I would rather keep work devices outside of my home network.
Parsec is very smooth and responsive, and it takes only 50mbps or less IIRC.
Though, you don’t have to force everyone to come in every day, just don’t let people take that stuff home, so if they need that stuff, then they come in that day. Videogame devs are actually more likely to be nerds that get full value out of on-line social contact and have even less reason to benefit from seeing colleagues in-person.
The company should also have secure remote tunneling, so the powerful pc’s can be used by even a 10 year old tablet at home if need be. They can save some room and power by not needing those powerful computers set up at a desk with monitors. Have a couple out for the people that want or need to come in, and the rest can be in a server mount configuration.
I worked for two triple A studios and we have had both our dev kits and high end PCs at home. There are so many tools to encrypt, secure, remote access, manage, etc, that it’s no problem at all. And most are tools these companies are using anyways, in office.
Both companies actually got MORE productive with work from home. My old company is forcing people back to office, but my new one isn’t. I wonder if it has anything to do with that big office building they just bought…
Not every dev is compiling code to run on a devkit
Depends on the studio. There will be a lead platform, and if that platform is a console, then a majority will run on a devkit.
surely they are not running a new build every day.
In the studio I worked in, we ran new builds almost twice a day. That doesn’t include the iterative changes you make if you are a programmer. If you don’t run new builds contantly, that means you aren’t doing any actual work if you are on the engineering side. If you are in art you might not really screw around with too many builds. If you are a director or producer, you might not either if you’re bad at your job.
If you don’t run new builds contantly, that means you aren’t doing any actual work if you are on the engineering side.
This is not true. There are higher-end engineering positions that orchestrate everything for the other engineers, amongst other things.
I’ll be explicit in regards to my other comment about remote working for others without gamedev experience.
Compiling/generating/deploying game-builds is done locally at the studio, but the process is controlled remotely by the game devs.
Must be the most pointless thing in the world, and terrible for the environment, have everyone travel in separate cars to work in the exact same way as they could at home.
Add in the fact there’s always 1 person not there or with a client/customer based elsewhere, so all your calls and meetings are still done through video.
Not feasible or possible everywhere, I certainly couldn’t commute by public transport where I live it’d take double the time, my point wasn’t directed at this specific case but the force to offices in general and there’s no doubt huge amounts of people are using cars.
Or it’s a layoff without actually doing the layoff process because they don’t want to pay severance, and it would look bad in the headlines when they just announced GTA6.
The article also links to another interesting article that begins by summarizing the disadvantages some employees experienced when the initial switch to working from home happened.
Balancing work and kids at home;
Finding space for a home office and learning new tools;
Workdays at home alone;
The line between work and life blurred.
Number 1 & 2 should not be an issue for most people now. Number 3 & 4 are personal and should not be used as an excuse to implement a company wide policy on everybody.
What does this say to the employee who disagrees with the company return to office “culture”? It says to them they aren’'t welcome here. Imagine turning on your computer and being locked out. That’s what happened during the Twitter X Corp takeover.
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Everyone working a desk job with a computer in a physical office space together is just about as practical as a large group meeting where one or two people speak with no input from others.
Some people may need to be in an office/meeting sometimes but most do not usually and it’s a waste of time for the employee and a waste of money for the company. Just my opinion. ;)
It’s also basically a pay cut and a huge loss of benefits. What does Rockstar have to say about that?
All unions should be taking up the issue of the right to remote work.
Don’t most union workers currently work in jobs that don’t make sense to be remote like manufacturing? I wish there was a tech workers union that could push for this. I’m no union expert though
That would require that office workers unionize. Which, while hopefully being more common nowadays, is still seen as antithetical to most office workers.
All tech workers should join a union first … but yes, agreed.
I have a friend who works in the R* office in Massachusetts. The whole fucking company sounds like an abject nightmare to work for. Between the Stasi-esque HR lady that wanders around making notes of who is at their desks, to the legions of indoctrinated kool-aid drinkers, onto the just bizarre behind the scenes decisions and poor management.
He’s been dreading this announcement for a while now, and it may just be the one thing that will rip the scales off the otherwise creepily loyal workers.
Corporate America can absolutely be a cult. I’ve jumped around a fair bit, but you can always tell who the lifers are. Think the company is their savior, love the CEO even though they only met them once, go to all the functions, it’s sad to me. Most of those lifers were making much less than me because I jumped around to bump my salary, they are constantly passed over for promotions because “now just isn’t the time”, and usually they ignore their home life and never take PTO.
Not just corporate America, corporations around the world have it.
are they just trying to get some people to quit before they do expensive layoffs
Tbh, game studios often require special equipment such as dev kits and high-end PCs for development. It makes sense that they might not want to send this equipment home, especially if it is an unreleased console"s dev kit. Game studios honestly seem more justified in not having WFH
Tbh you shouldn’t defend rockstar just because you like their games.
I actually don’t like their games. I am speaking as someone who used to work for a AAA, both before and during COVID shelter in place
Why is everyone else in the comments disputing what you’re claiming?
Because every other dev here is saying that on-premise work isn’t actually needed for for devkits, and this guy has a definite vibe of “man, if I don’t defend the multi-million dollar game corporations, no one else will!”
Dev kits are accessed remotely. High-end PC 's are accessed remotely. Everything is done remotely. Hardware stays on-site. Source? Am game dev who works remotely full-time, using 4K streaming.
Maybe the tools have changed since last I worked in the industry (or maybe we weren’t good at using all the features), but I never saw that anyone had remote access to the devkits. I could remote into my workstation, but it surely was not the best way to work.
Yeah, Microsoft Remote Desktop is relatively slow but works for most workflows. For more demanding/responsive stuff with higher framerates (games), try Parsec (https://parsec.app/), it’s great. It has controller pass-through as well, at least for sony. I’m not sure about other brands.
Correct me if I am wrong, but this doesn’t seem to work for devkits? Like if I want to run something on a PS4 devkit, I can’t use parsec for that, can I?
Yes, you can use Parsec for that.
The devkit software (has its own proprietary video streaming/control) would be on the on-site PC you are controlling remotely, using Parsec from anywhere, which would then control the PS4. Or you could use VPN from anywhere with the devkit software and connect remotely to the devkit directly.
The first scenario is ideal because you’re only using Parsec (or RDP) from your personal device, whereas the second scenario would require installing the devkit software on your personal PC, which in my opinion it’s not good to mix work/personal hardware. Your work might instead provide a computer to remote with, but I would rather keep work devices outside of my home network.
Parsec is very smooth and responsive, and it takes only 50mbps or less IIRC.
I’ll definitely keep this in mind if I end up going back to the industry. Thanks!
All that stuff is not hosted in the work computer, they use virtualization.
Though, you don’t have to force everyone to come in every day, just don’t let people take that stuff home, so if they need that stuff, then they come in that day. Videogame devs are actually more likely to be nerds that get full value out of on-line social contact and have even less reason to benefit from seeing colleagues in-person.
The company should also have secure remote tunneling, so the powerful pc’s can be used by even a 10 year old tablet at home if need be. They can save some room and power by not needing those powerful computers set up at a desk with monitors. Have a couple out for the people that want or need to come in, and the rest can be in a server mount configuration.
I worked for two triple A studios and we have had both our dev kits and high end PCs at home. There are so many tools to encrypt, secure, remote access, manage, etc, that it’s no problem at all. And most are tools these companies are using anyways, in office.
Both companies actually got MORE productive with work from home. My old company is forcing people back to office, but my new one isn’t. I wonder if it has anything to do with that big office building they just bought…
Not every dev is compiling code to run on a devkit tho? Also, not gamedev, but surely they’re not running a new build every day
Depends on the studio. There will be a lead platform, and if that platform is a console, then a majority will run on a devkit.
In the studio I worked in, we ran new builds almost twice a day. That doesn’t include the iterative changes you make if you are a programmer. If you don’t run new builds contantly, that means you aren’t doing any actual work if you are on the engineering side. If you are in art you might not really screw around with too many builds. If you are a director or producer, you might not either if you’re bad at your job.
This is not true. There are higher-end engineering positions that orchestrate everything for the other engineers, amongst other things.
I’ll be explicit in regards to my other comment about remote working for others without gamedev experience. Compiling/generating/deploying game-builds is done locally at the studio, but the process is controlled remotely by the game devs.
I’m sure you can install an HP anywhere concentrator and remote into the machines from home, networking has solutions for things like this.
Must be the most pointless thing in the world, and terrible for the environment, have everyone travel in separate cars to work in the exact same way as they could at home.
Add in the fact there’s always 1 person not there or with a client/customer based elsewhere, so all your calls and meetings are still done through video.
Yeah but think about the property prices… Rich people losing money. What a tragedy.
I don’t see that rockstar is mandating people to commute by car, this is the UK, they have public transport
That doesn’t fix anywhere near all of the problems with this.
I never claimed it did?
By using it as a reply and an excuse, it implies it alleviates concerns.
Excuse?
I simply pointed out a ridiculous statement, not that I think the policy Rockstar is pushing is good.
Not feasible or possible everywhere, I certainly couldn’t commute by public transport where I live it’d take double the time, my point wasn’t directed at this specific case but the force to offices in general and there’s no doubt huge amounts of people are using cars.
I never claimed it was feasable for everyone, but neither are Rockstar forcing everyone to drive
You seem to be making up arguments then ignoring them, really odd
Nobody says they are. You brought it up. It was a general statement about the overall story, not this specific one.
I brought it up as a counter to the ridiculous claim that everyone in the Rockstar office will need to drive to work in the UK.
I get that people are pissed off, but that reason isn’t acurate
I love going into the office my one day a week. It’s a new, less comfortable place to sit on Teams meetings! /s
This will always be about power and useless managers feeling they aren’t important.
Or it’s a layoff without actually doing the layoff process because they don’t want to pay severance, and it would look bad in the headlines when they just announced GTA6.
The article also links to another interesting article that begins by summarizing the disadvantages some employees experienced when the initial switch to working from home happened.
Number 1 & 2 should not be an issue for most people now. Number 3 & 4 are personal and should not be used as an excuse to implement a company wide policy on everybody.
What does this say to the employee who disagrees with the company return to office “culture”? It says to them they aren’'t welcome here. Imagine turning on your computer and being locked out. That’s what happened during the Twitter X Corp takeover.