A new report claims that Naughty Dog recently mandated that workers return to the office five days per week–up from three–and had been pushing staff to work “long hours” to get a demo of Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet ready to show off to Sony higher-ups.
The Bloomberg report said that beginning in late October, Naughty Dog asked staff to work “a minimum of eight extra hours a week” and document their overtime in a spreadsheet. “This overtime period was an attempt to get the production back on track after several missed deadlines,” the report said.
Workers were told to not work more than 60 hours per week, the report said. The return-to-office mandate was disruptive to some workers who reportedly had to find cover for childcare and their pets. The report added that the “mandated overtime” period wrapped up this week with the completion of the demo.
Sony and Naughty Dog declined to comment when approached by Bloomberg.
The report added that Naughty Dog established a new team of producers in 2021 with the directive of helping cut back on instances of extended overtime, or crunch. “Many” of these people have since left the company, the report said.
Finally, the report said Naughty Dog is aiming to release Intergalactic in mid-2027, and that workers are fearful that “overtime requirements will get worse” as the game’s release draws closer.
On the topic of developers at Naughty Dog crunching, studio head Neil Druckmann said in a June 2020 interview with GQ, “They’re gonna work very hard. We need to put some guardrails [in] so they don’t injure themselves, but I don’t think we could prevent them from working hard and still make the kind of games we make.”
Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells said in 2021 that its workers want to work more than 40 hours per week. Keeping people in the office only 40 hours a week “would frustrate people to no end,” he said, adding that unionization won’t help.
Intergalactic is a new IP from Naughty Dog, which is notable given the company has mostly worked on sequels to its Uncharted and The Last of Us series for the past two decades. The sci-fi game aims to be Naughty Dog’s “wildest, most creative story yet,” and focuses on the character Jordan A. Mun, a bounty hunter who becomes stranded on a planet called Sempiria.
Naughty Dog has multiple internal development teams, and a second team could be working on The Last of Us: Part III.