GTA V, Red Dead Redemption 2 and other games have cemented Rockstar Games (owned by Take-Two Interactive) as one of the leading developers in the gaming industry. The secret of the success of the British studio was revealed by its former employee.
Image source: Rockstar Games
We are talking about David O’Reilly, a former environment artist for Rockstar North with 12 years of experience. From 2011 to 2023, the specialist managed to work on GTA V, Red Dead Redemption 2 and the upcoming GTA VI.
In recent video on personal YouTube channel O’Reilly said he is often asked about the secret to Rockstar’s success, and he has an answer – taking care of employees and avoiding the industry’s common layoff cycles.
As a result of this approach, Rockstar has been able to retain “almost all of its institutional knowledge” over the past 27 years, O’Reilly said. The team still includes some veterans of DMA Design (the name of the studio until 2002).
“Your long-time employees are the studio’s knowledge base. Big publishers like Sony and Microsoft don’t understand this because they care about money. They don’t care about games. They might as well be selling sausages,” O’Reilly said.
At the same time, O’Reilly cannot call the studio an ideal place to work. In recent months, Rockstar has been dealing with the consequences of firing employees for discussing confidential information on a public platform.
Final hearings in the case will pass November 17 and 18 – just ahead of the hotly anticipated release of GTA VI. The game will go on sale next week, November 19, only for PS5, Xbox Series X and S.
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