this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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Still a union buster
He left rockstar after red dead redemption II, partly because he was tired of dealing with those execs.
Tired of dealing with greed-flated, not fully rounded humans? I can relate.
He left with a shit ton of money.
So he’s going to rehire the visa dependent labourers RG fired?
The ones that were fired 5 years after he left R*? I mean, it'd be nice if he did, but is he really at fault here?
If some of these 35 visa dependent worked for more than 9 years, I am pretty sure he was there when they were exploited to work there. There’s no indication that these workers have less than a 5 year tenure.
fyigm, amirite?
How's this a fyigm situation? He left 5 years before this particular thing happened, he had no say in it.
Now if he has actual need for these employees in his new company, I could see him hiring them there, but his new studio is in California and those employees were sacked in the UK, meaning they need a new job in the UK to keep living there. He also currently has fewer employees than the amount that R* fired. That's how small that shop is.
His brother, however, is still an exec at Rockstar. He, along with the rest of R* and Take-Two leadership has a lot to answer for.
In my eyes it's simple. His brother is not just an exec at rockstar, he's the company president. They're worth hundreds of millions of dollars and both have been in positions to shape company policy especially around labor conditions within their subsidiary.
I can all but promise that a union busting culture is not new. The influence they've had as upper executives cannot be minimal, as these guys have been the ones making the golden goose.
Odds are both houser brothers are sitting on loads of take two stock. Their performance bonuses have probably been more money than anyone on here will ever make in their lives, their kids' lives, or their grandkids' lives collectively with few if any exceptions. The crunch time issues of the past are absolutely a symptom of the disease: fyigm. Why pay anybody or treat anybody fairly when you can just keep your money?
I'm not saying others are not also to blame, but anyone who is in a top leadership post at an organization usually has a massive amount of discretion especially for those under them.
But even his brother is not top leadership at the organization. Any direct orders from their superiors at Take-two still take precedence over what Sam Houser says. In fact it's currently suspected that the order to fire came from Take-Two.
They're rich beyond the average person's imagination, but not "early Google employee" rich, let alone "started multi-billion dollar company" rich. They started as regular employees that, after making the first few golden geese, got given stock options so they wouldn't leave.
Turns out the big 100 hour crunch for RDR2 was just Dan Houser, Lazlow and 2 other senior writers and for about 3 weeks. Apparently the crunch used to be a bigger issue earlier on, but got improved after GTA V.
As I understand, the issue at R* wasn't ever really anyone's boss saying "you gotta work 70 hour weeks", it was more "the senior staff works 100 hour weeks and maybe if I only do 40, I'll not be seen as a team player". Which is still toxic, but if they've taken steps to reduce it, perhaps things aren't as bad as they seem.
The games industry is so bad because of the deadlines. The whole public announcement of "we'll release game on date X" is a huge problem, as is the fact that games make most of the money just after release, so you gotta have a new game out every few years if you want to keep the lights on - a problem R* no longer has since they've brought in billions, so I'm sure Take-Two has loosened the leash a bit on that front at least.
Hell, I'm a regular software engineer and I've worked 60-70 hour weeks. Not because I was forced to, but because the deadline was near if not passed already, the customer was getting unhappy and I knew it'd look great for my next salary review. I suspect if I was working on a public project, essentially a work of art, that millions of people will get to see and I saw my boss work 100 hours a week, I'd also be motivated to work 60 or 70 for a while. So I can kinda understand how some R* employees say there was no forced crunch time and others say they felt like they were expected to crunch.
Honestly, the Houser brothers have just always struck me as creatives who are super passionate about their work. That's the type of person that can work ridiculous hours without even realizing it and it could bend one's expectations of what others should do, but it doesn't seem to me like they've ever expected everyone else to work as much as they do, nor has either of them (or even the brothers combined) become a billionaire off over 20 years in senior leadership at a company that literally prints money for its parent company.
Check out the state of Civilization 7 at launch for what Take-Two can force. The game badly needed a delay, but didn't get one. I'm assuming the GTA delay factored into that decision. Although Civilization isn't nearly the cash cow that GTA is, this is the latest entry from a 30+ year old series and the biggest name in the 4X strategy genre.
For what it's worth, Civ 7 is a much better game now, after additional content (some free as an apology) and big monthly patches.
came to this thread exactly to make fun of this “fully-rounded labour exploiter”
A man who left Rockstar five years before they fired people for discussing unionizing?
Refresh the thread. He hired the fired foreigners when he was still director.^CX^
I'm not following, he hired some people, then 5 years after he left someone else fired those people? Isn't he more likely the good guy in the scenerio?
"How dare you give these people a job? That put them in a position where someone else could take away their job!"
It honestly depends how he hired them. If he offered them living wages, plus Visa fees, lawyers, and healthcare, he was a “good employer” when he hired them. The fact the union discord server is older than 5 years leads me to believe the visa dependent were offered less. So he exploited them knowing they can be deported as soon as the studio was done with them.
So the union discord existed when he was there and he didn't fire anyone involved. 5 years after he leaves someone else fires the people involved so... Fuck the guy who hired people and did nothing to prevent the discord server years ago?
I am not so sure why you are strawmanning my arguments. If he was aware of visa extortion practices during his tenure, is he a good director or a bad one?
I'm responding to the arguments and evidence you are presenting. I know nothing of the situation so do not understand the basis of the claims you are making, and you don't seem to be backing them up very well.
He was never the owner. It's a 45 billion dollar company, his net worth is said to be like 250 mill. He was paid a very high salary since he was one of the original employees of that subsidiary, and given some stock in the parent company as bonuses, so he's set for life and richer than most of us will ever be, but he never had any real say in the parent company's decisions. Take-Two is known for being absolute scum. They don't just own Rockstar Games, they also own the companies behind the Civilization series (which has Paradox-like DLC scumming) and the Borderlands series (remember when BL3 was Epic exclusive on PC?).
Technically if you'd started at, say, Microsoft as a software engineer or other similar role when he started at Rockstar, and stayed there until 2020, you could honestly be richer. Same for Google, some of their earliest employees became billionaires from the stock options. The Houser brothers made Rockstar famous, but they were never ownership class.
But even as a creative director, he was this oblivious to visa extortion contracted labourers?
Uh I'm pretty sure as creative director, he didn't see anyone holding a gun to anyone's head forcing them to sign a shit contract.
Why exactly do you think they were being extorted before any of this? If someone worked for a company for several years, I'm assuming they actually liked working there. Before someone at Take-two saw that there were a bunch of people at their subsidiary who'd unionized, some of whom were foreigners on visas and some locals. Why is the problem for you not that a bunch of people were fired for unionizing, but the fact that some of them weren't born on the island they were working on?
This reads as if you're ignorant on how much more visa workers pay to live somewhere than locals. Should 50+% of my income go to my residency status in a country where that income pars rent prices? Ignorance of visa extortion in the UK is your choice. But don't tell me Dan was ignorant to the exploitation.
But nobody was extorted into working there lol, they volunteered.
We're not talking about some village where people are forced into working the only job available so the boss can demand whatever. We're talking about people who chose to work at a particular company and knew the deal they were getting before moving. You don't change countries for a job without doing your research on cost of living first.
Also, Dan Houser has been living in the US for decades. He's a writer, not an HR specialist. Why does he have to be familiar with the exact situation of the UK labour market? Why does he get the blame and not the UK itself for having shit laws?
I swear some people just want to hate whoever's name sticks out when we truly don't know who knew what or what these employees salaries were.
What'd he do?
He hired the foreigners that were fired recently when he was still a founder.
Fair enough, giving people jobs in a country where they can actually make a living is a bad thing.
You legitimately believe visa workers were not threatened to be deported in the UK if they worked for less than their Unionized workers who actually negotiated for living wages‽ In the Brexit economy‽
You don't have to threaten to deport your workers if you sign the contract beforehand though? Once they've agreed to the salary, they've agreed to it. Did they make less than a pureblood Brit in the same role? Perhaps. We don't know that. But generally speaking, you don't go importing labour unless you literally can't find enough locals anymore. The bureaucracy nightmare isn't worth the cost savings otherwise. Particularly because a lot of countries don't allow you to pay the imported labour less than you'd pay your purebloods in the same role. Exception of course being people from countries with whom you have freedom of movement (so anything intra-EU is allowed)
Also, it's not like he was the CEO or something. He was the creative director. I swear some people just want to be angry at everyone.
If he wasn't part of the hiring decisions, I take back what I said. But creative directors do influence who gets assigned roles in a studio, and what tasks get sent to the visa’d. There’s nothing indicating he wasn't aware the studio hired visa workers when he worked there. Accents and vernaculars differ. I doubt he was oblivious that roles he assigned to foreigners were not hired to be exploited.
So you have no idea if what you're saying is even true?
Stop strawmanning?
Are you saying he wasn't involved in role assignment of visa extortion as a director?
I quoted you directly, stating that "if this turns out not to be true I take it back" which implies you have no strong evidence for it being true.
You think he was subconsciously hinting at his prominent cranium?
Projection is a silly thing. Especially when it's digressive.