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Are you boycotting RDR2 because of the misrepresented 100 hours 'controversy'?

Are you boycotting Red Dead Redemption 2?

  • Yes, I am

    Votes: 36 6.9%
  • No, I am not

    Votes: 472 90.4%
  • undecided

    Votes: 14 2.7%

  • Total voters
    522

vorob

Neo Member
after the recent labor story and the "100 hour weekends" some gamers have mentioned that they are boycotting Rockstar and will not be purchasing Red Dead Redemption 2 citing a moral dilemma

how about you, has this story changed your plans, will you be boycotting Red Dead 2?

They are adult people, it's their choice.
 

onlyoneno1

Member
A little clarification some may have missed via Kotaku or Gamesindustry.biz:



As is often the case, his comments were exaggerated. I don't personally see any reason to boycott them over poor working conditions because once you take that step you're going to find yourself boycotting a huge portion of the games on the market.

I usually don't react to or make up my mind about these things without thoroughly reading about them. Because, remember, we live in the era of "social justice" and every little thing is an opportunity to raise pitch forks and start a purge.
 

betrayal

Banned
I know several people in our company or other companies who have put 60-100 hours of work into something on a weekly basis for a few weeks. It's not because they're forced to, but because they want to. If you have passion for the thing you do then it can be a pretty normal thing to do for a few weeks.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
wwx5exndw6b11.png
 
I'm boycotting them for not putting in enough hours to produce a PC version. That'll teach 'em.

But seriously if you boycot games because of these practices you can kiss your hobby goodbye because it's pretty normal in this sector and plenty of others.
 
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cormack12

Gold Member
These never happen on any sort of great scale unless the issue is unprecedented/reaches breaking point. Same as sports team protests. If you have a 'captive' audience then there is no other option.
 

Redneckerz

Those long posts don't cover that red neck boy
I am not surprised:
  • It being a Mister Apoc thread where the premise of his OP is based on fabricated outrage and the contents of his OP are pushing that narrative
  • The story about 100 hours is a clear sign of fabricated outrage, done by users who have had no interest reading the details, thus contributing to deliberate misinformation
  • People treat the 100 hours work week mark as if its a consistent thing. It is not. It is a brief moment that could happen for a few weeks near the end of development, or somewhere inbetween
  • Crunch times are a common and accepted policy within the industry. Usually, people will see extra benefits or are compensated adequately
  • If employee morale is good and people are treated good, then people are more likely to work these crunch moments out of sheer passion
  • Boycotting (usually) won't do jack shit to the success of a game. Although misinformed word of mouth will be a reason to not buy the game, the graph below, which i borrowed from my earlier post regarding CP2077, shows that the vast majority of influences lay in various different reasonings

untitled-png.525124


The biggest factors are Story/Premise, Price and Word of Mouth.

The last one is especially interesting, as it begs the question: Will people who are this outraged on the web, tell others about it in real life (Say, family, friends, randoms)? - I am sure a few will, but most folks likely won't know what the issue is about, won't know what (in this case) the issue about RDR2 is about, and i am sure a group of people also does not really care what friend/cousin/random Adam has to say about this game (For the aforementioned reasons).

Conclusion: All this outrage, all these threats on boycotting a game/not buying a game/saying you won't buy a game because of reason X is just hollow in nature for the most part. It will just be seen as collateral damage.

And frankly it disappoints me that this fabricated narrative continues to be pushed even after the fact. GAF is ought to be better than that imo.
 
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Lastyou1

Banned
I would never boycott something where people have the option to leave anytime they want. If they do not like it stop working there.


Yeah, as if fibdong a new job would be the easiest thing.


Look, If you don't care about work conditions and workers' rights, thst is fine, noone is judging.
But don't stick your head into the sand and pretend that everything is all right.

Boycotting the game? It is a personal decision, nobody should feel entitled either way. For instance, I boycott everything Amazon-related due to their inhuman working conditions.
 

Saicows

Neo Member
lol... the minimum wage for someone doing crunch is about USD50k/y? That's more than i make in Brazil (about R$180k). That's an small apartment in São Paulo every year. And i firmly believe they do more money in this crunch weeks.

Also, they can choose to not work at the company. If they see the crunch time coming, they can say no. If everybody rejects this kind of practice, it wouldn't exist.

So no, i won't be boycotting the game. I live in the real world where people work for 1/4 of that every year doing 10-12 hours everyday.
 

Woo-Fu

Banned
I'm boycotting it right up until the moment they release a PC version. Timing is just a coincidence, honest.
 

OldBoyGamer

Banned
i'll borrow it or buy 2nd hand. Or in 6 months after a price drop. If the reviews come in high, this would have been a week 1 buy for me.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Honestly, and I can say this having done plenty of crunching over the years, acting like quality of life in the games industry is so bad that it demands a boycott is a fucking joke. Long hours and the burnout that comes with it sucks, but nobody is trapped, noone is putting up suicide nets, and on the overall spectrum of labor abuses its pretty damn insignificant.

Plenty of workers have much tougher conditions to endure, often with added physical and mechanical hazards to worry about.
 

DavidGzz

Member
I wonder how many who are crying for these devs, boycott clothing manufacturers. Don't clothes/shoe manufacturers use sweatshops to this day? That's ok though since it isn't a dev living in a 1st world country.
 

Akuza89

Member
Well I'll be getting it at some point, I'm in no rush for it.

The whole 100 hour "issue" isn't really an issue to the scale of let's say, telltale games. It's 4 people who did it and they did it because they wanted to. Get over it.
 

Thiagosc777

Member
You do realize the developers agreed to and negotiated their salaries before becoming employees? And paid pretty damn well for the work they do as well.

And what's with this splitting the profits bs. None of the developers invested any money into the game. They invest their time and get paid nicely for it. The company puts up the hundreds of millions of dollars it takes to make a game of this scope. Of course the company gets all the profits. That's how business works ffs.

That's the point. This whole story "let's help the developers by buying the game" some people were posting here makes no sense. You aren't helping the developers by buying it, only the company and the higher ups in it.
 

Mihos

Gold Member
I have done 100 hour weeks many times in my career. Worst thing you could do is boycott my product after I put in the effort.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
I have done 100 hour weeks many times in my career. Worst thing you could do is boycott my product after I put in the effort.
Straight from the mouth of a GTA V developer who went through a crunch period:
A boycott isn't the right way to go about it. All it would do is undermine and insult the effort people have put into the games(even if by terrible conditions). The only way to fix the problem is from the very top. We need to move away from traditional release calendars and hype.

He's right, of course. The only way to fix this is to massively shake up how this industry works on a fundamental level, and it's going to be quite difficult to get every AAA developer and publisher guilty of overworking to play ball willingly.
 

SegaShack

Member
They worked 100 hours a week so you want to not buy the product they worked on? It’s a job they chose. I’m sorry but software developers should not work in the game industry if they don’t want these hours. There are much better paying jobs with normal hours for developers.
 

Redneckerz

Those long posts don't cover that red neck boy
I have done 100 hour weeks many times in my career. Worst thing you could do is boycott my product after I put in the effort.
Empathy is of little concern to those users and game journo's (Heck as a journo myself its appalling to see how lack of research leads to a fabricated narrative this close) when you miss out on Cake Day because of it.

Sympathy for developers for trying to release on time and with this much detail is for wimps, obviously.
no1curr.png
's about that.
I am being sarcastic ofcourse, satirizing the complaints directly at Rockstar for *grasp* briefly have people run 100 hour work weeks.
 

VolumeRX

Neo Member
Hey Mods or 'Mister Apoc' how about you update the thread with the actual relevant context from the new response from Dan Houser? now it's simply misleading everyone, he only said that he, Lazlow, Rupert Humphries and Mike Unsworth had 3 WEEKS that 'they felt necessary' to crunch that summed up to 100 hours, 4 people that wanted to work those 3 weeks like this, he then proceeded to say that "No employee, Senior of Junior is demanded to work like this at all".
 
I wonder how many who are crying for these devs, boycott clothing manufacturers. Don't clothes/shoe manufacturers use sweatshops to this day? That's ok though since it isn't a dev living in a 1st world country.
Nike and Apple def use Chinese slave labor factories. Apple actually had to install suicide nets around the building to stop people from killing themselves....yet lets virtue signal on the internet from our iPhones.
 

VolumeRX

Neo Member
V VolumeRX the thread title of the appropriate thread has been updated here


https://www.neogaf.com/threads/game...r-three-weeks-of-a-seven-year-project.1466877


This thread title reflects a poll that is taking place and is correct. Thanks.
Thanks but I see some people are still unaware of the full(real?) context and still talk about it as if they are unaware of the new info, some still wanna boycott despite not knowing the full story :)
That's what I was going by
 

NickFire

Member
I cannot believe people would boycott a game because people worked too hard on it. Absurd. If this was a slave or child labor thing yeah I’d get it. But hell no am I going to pretend that working on the most anticipated game of the past few years was against their will. Ridiculous.
 

HotPocket69

Banned
The people reeee'ing over this 100 hour work week bullshit have probably never been gainfully employed anyway.

I'm boycotting work on the 26th. I'm taking the day off to binge the fuck out of it through the weekend. Gonna be awesome.
 
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Lastyou1

Banned
The people reeee'ing over this 100 hour work week bullshit have probably never been gainfully employed anyway.

I'm boycotting work on the 26th. I'm taking the day off to binge the fuck out of it through the weekend. Gonna be awesome.


I currently work full time and maybe it is you who lack basic knowledge of worjers' rights?


Oh, and the "only four of us did 100 hours crunches" seems more like damage control than truth.

Of course I wasn't there, so I do not know, but again do not pretend that leaving your job and jeopardize your health and wellbeing of your family is a simple thing to do.
 

Javthusiast

Banned
No, not antisemitism. You are dealing with people who are using a system of morality to achieve their own ends, which in this case means punishing someone who disagrees with them.

Thank you. Instead of simply giving me a warning by messaging me or something and say hey we think this could be read as this and that, even though I clearly was just making a snarky comment using that word like people use bucks, smackaroos etc. for currency, they just immediately hand out week long bans. Yikes.
 

Daymos

Member
I don't believe in following the outrage crowd. There's like this floating cloud of politically correct/SJW rage that floats over America consuming anything and everything it deems unjust. Luckily it has an EXTREMELY short attention span and only floats over 1 thing for a day or two before it moves on.
 

HotPocket69

Banned
I currently work full time and maybe it is you who lack basic knowledge of worjers' rights?


Oh, and the "only four of us did 100 hours crunches" seems more like damage control than truth.

Of course I wasn't there, so I do not know, but again do not pretend that leaving your job and jeopardize your health and wellbeing of your family is a simple thing to do.

I didn't pretend or infer any of that. What I do know is that if you love what you do, working 100 hours in a week isn't an issue, especially if you're in good health and ESPECIALLY if maybe you DONT have a family. Maybe it's easy for people who do have family. Maybe their husband or wife is an asshole and their kids are little shits. Maybe they enjoy the time in the office more than they do at home. Who knows.

Ive pulled 80 hours a week and was well compensated and as a dude who enjoyed that particular job and was single at the time, I had no problems with it. And when those paychecks would roll in..... B-b-b-ballin!
 
I won't be buying RDR2, but it won't be because of some ethical crusade against overwork. I just won't be buying it because open world games tend to bore me more than excite me nowadays. Spider-Man was probably the first one I really enjoyed since Infamous: Second Son and it'll probably be another 4 years before I'm ready to dive into another.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
I wonder how many who are crying for these devs, boycott clothing manufacturers. Don't clothes/shoe manufacturers use sweatshops to this day? That's ok though since it isn't a dev living in a 1st world country.

Nike and Apple def use Chinese slave labor factories. Apple actually had to install suicide nets around the building to stop people from killing themselves....yet lets virtue signal on the internet from our iPhones.

5546106+_8c0dd1c21a4fd35463b1f9a29814c533.png


Boycott :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
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