Rockstar Games is the latest AAA games dev to mandate employees work from home due to the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.
The offices of all of Rockstar's eight international game dev studios from Rockstar North to Rockstar Bangalore are now on lockdown. The billion-dollar games-maker has enacted remote work policies to safeguard against COVID-19. The studio has actually created robust tools and hardware to ensure game devs can continue their work without disruption--which is critical considering Grand Theft Auto VI is on the horizon. Rockstar titles get delayed enough as it is.
"In the interest of reducing the possible impact of COVID-19, Rockstar Games has implemented work from home policies across our international offices and studios. After significant research and consultation with our teams around the work, we began rolling out remote work solutions worldwide across the past week, and we are confident we have a robust system in place for our teams to continue their work with a minimum disruption," Rockstar said in a statement on Twitter.
"Our online games will continue to operate as usual, and all our support teams will remain available for our players. The health and safety of our employees and their families remains our top priority, and we will continue to adapt our practices to the situation as it evolves. We appreciate your patience and understanding, and wish you and your families the best of health during this unusual time."
In the meantime, Rockstar plans to roll out new updates for Grand Theft Auto Online, the live game that just keeps raking in hundreds of millions of dollars even 7 years later.
There's also new Red Dead Online content in the pipeline, as well as new projects in Take-Two Interactive's release slate.
There's been rumblings of a Bully sequel but that seems quite unlikely at this point. Rockstar is most assuredly focusing all their dedicated devteam's attention into Grand Theft Auto VI while the live group focuses on RDO and GTAO.