A new report claims that Naughty Dog recently ordered employees to take on “mandatory” overtime as it worked to complete the Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet demo.
This is according to Bloombergwhich states that employees were asked to work a minimum of eight additional hours per week to a maximum of 60 hours per week. This period of mandatory overtime supposedly lasted for the last seven weeks and ended this week.
Developers were also told to report to the office for work five days a week (instead of three), disrupting their usual routine of caring for children and animals, but management reportedly told employees that this schedule would revert to three days a week from January.
“Starting in late October, employees were asked to start working a minimum of eight extra hours a week and to record overtime in an internal spreadsheet,” said the people, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly, Bloomberg reported.
“This overtime period was an attempt to get production back on track after several missed deadlines.”
Both Sony and Naughty Dog declined to comment on the claims.
While there has been resistance to crunch in recent years, Naughty Dog's stance on mandatory overtime has come under scrutiny several times. last time in 2021 when then-studio co-president Evan Wells responded to a question about his personal experience with crunch by stating, “I've definitely worked really hard over the years. I think that's partly what helped me get to where I am in my career.”
