Rockstar Games: Quality of home life comes first, work life second

Now that developers are working at home, Rockstar Games has put a greater emphasis on the quality of life for its employees.

Like practically every games developer, Rockstar Games has moved its work out of studios and into homes. Developers are now working in the comfort of their own homes and it seems to have a positive effect on morale. Certain things are harder, like putting together the new GTA Online Cayo Perico update entirely from home, but the new COVID-19 measures have gone a long way as part of Rockstar's new crunch reforms.

In a recent interview with GQ, Rockstar director of design production Tarek Hamad said that Rockstar's new work-at-home policies protect employee's quality of life. This is a big step towards stamping out the crunch that led to overwork during the development of games like GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2.

"I think that at the forefront of everybody's minds, more so this year than ever before, is that everyone's quality of life is really protected. There's been a real effort on every single level that everyone working from home understands that now that we've blurred the boundaries between home and the workplace, their home life comes first, that their quality of life comes first."

Tarek also says singleplayer will "absolutely" continue being a big part of the Grand Theft Auto franchise (although we expect GTA 6 to connect to GTA Online too).