The game company Rockstar Games strives for fairer working conditions for its employees. This should also affect the next part of the “GTA” series.

Massive, beautifully animated worlds, innovative game principles and a hearty pinch of corrosively cynical humor – with games like the “Red Dead Redemption” series, “Max Payne”, “LA Noire” and of course the now five independent “Grand Theft Auto parts have made some of the most successful and important contributions to the computer and video game market. However, it is said to have been catastrophic working conditions under which these masterpieces were created. While attention is now paid to fair production in many areas of consumption, this has not played a significant role in the games industry so far.

Rockstar Games: Overtime and Strip Club Field Trips

In 2018, the year the milestone “Red Dead Redemption 2” was released, several Rockstar Games employees spoke up. As the game magazine Kotaku reported, there were incredible working hours with 100-hour weeks before the release. This is so common in the industry that it even has its own name: crunch. Personal life, mental health and marriages have been sacrificed to meet the release date. Employees described the company’s former corporate philosophy to the news site Bloomberg as a boys’ club, with “boozes, fights and excursions to strip clubs”. Sexism and verbal violence were the order of the day. However, that is about to change.

Rockstar Games is contemporary – and so is “GTA 6”

The company, founded in 1998, has since fired some managers who are said to have behaved inappropriately towards employees. The gender pay gap is to be increasingly closed, and there are also additional benefits for the mental health of employees. Of course, this internal restructuring takes time, and according to some statements, certain processes have to be established first. This will primarily have one effect on the developers’ latest project: the release date will be pushed back further. Rockstar Games has been working on “GTA 6” since 2014 – and there is no end in sight, although experts expect it to be released in 2023/2024. But that’s not the only change the latest installment in the action series is set to see.

“GTA 6” for the first time with a female protagonist

For the first time, one of two main characters should be female. In a gaming world in which women have so far mainly appeared as sex objects, this can definitely be called progress. The protagonist, who will also have a Latin American background, is said to be part of a Bonnie and Clyde-esque duo. After New York City and Los Angeles, a fictional version of Miami is to be offered as a new location. Fans of the series should be reminded of “GTA Vice City”. In contrast to earlier times, however, in the future more attention will be paid to satirical content not to step down and thus create a mood against minorities. Whether and to what extent the new company philosophy is actually reflected in the game remains to be seen.