Naughty Dog: a former employee accuses the software house of excessive work pressure

    Naughty Dog: a former employee accuses the software house of excessive work pressure

    During the day yesterday we wrote to you about what is happening at the studies N Right now; the team is in fact working on The Last of Us Part 2 which will be released in a few months and the pace sustained by the developers, unfortunately, continue to be decidedly unsustainable, so much so that there are those who are hoping for a failure of the software house itself.


    Jonathan Cooper, a skilled animator who worked on the title, has released tweets stating that the so-called "crunch" is a widespread practice in this development studio. Often in fact the employees they work up to 55 hours per week which, due to the excessive accumulated stress, causes unpleasant situations such as hospital admissions. He says he abandoned Naughty Dog in order not to further damage his health and after seeing a friend of his in the throes of nervous breakdowns. Accusations also directed towards Sony which, according to him, would not lift a finger and leaves the software house executives carte blanche, satisfying every request received.


    “I left Naughty Dog because it had become unsustainable. Their reputation in Los Angeles is by no means positive when it comes to crunch time, which is why they have recently had to hire inexperienced staff or animators from the world of cinema. A good development team would have finished work on TLOU 2 well over a year ago. When I left the company, Naughty Dog threatened not to pay me the last fee if I didn't sign some documents that forbade me to share details on the production methods. When I pointed out that their behavior violated the law they retracted ”.



    All that remains is to wait for a response from Sony or ND on the matter. Obviously this has not been confirmed by anyone and we must therefore believe on the word of a former employee or not.

    When I left Naughty Dog late last year they threatened to withhold my final paycheck until I signed additional paperwork stating I wouldn't share their production practices. They finally relented when I assured them that was most likely illegal…


    - Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) March 12, 2020

    Contract work is a huge part of the LA ecosystem to ship large games. Unlike game design, there is a thriving animation industry here and seasoned animators can (often) choose their projects. Most of the contract story animators quit last year.

    - Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) March 12, 2020

    The truth is I have no awful crunch tale. The “story animators” as we were known were averaging 46hrs a week when I left and I personally never went over 55. The story team is super organized and we reacted to whatever was thrown at us. That's not to say others weren't suffering.


    - Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) March 12, 2020

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