Report claims Naughty Dog recently ordered employees take on “mandatory” overtime

A new report claims Naughty Dog recently ordered employees to take on “mandatory” overtime as it worked to get the Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet demo finalized.

That’s according to Bloomberg, which claims staff had been asked to work at least eight extra hours a week up to a maximum of 60 hours a week. This period of mandated overtime allegedly ran for the last seven weeks, ending this week.

Developers were also instructed to come into the office to work five days a week – up from three – disrupting their usual child and animal care routines, but management has reportedly told employees that this will return to three days a week for January.

“Starting in late October, staff were asked to begin working a minimum of eight extra hours a week and logging their overtime in an internal spreadsheet, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly,” Bloomberg reports.

“This overtime period was an attempt to get the production back on track after several missed deadlines.”

Both Sony and Naughty Dog declined to comment on the claims.

Whilst there has been a pushback on crunch in recent years, Naughty Dog’s stance on mandated overtime has been under scrutiny several times, most recently in 2021 when the studio’s then co-president Evan Wells responded to a question about his personal experience with crunch stating, “I have definitely personally worked very hard over the years. I think some of that has helped me get to where I am in my career.”