Rockstar Games and Take-Two are planning to suspend the more comfortable working model within a month for somewhat inexplicable reasons.

Bloomberg reported what Jenn Kolbe, Rockstar’s head of publishing, told employees. The company plans to suspend the hybrid work model for productivity and safety reasons, and says there are tangible benefits to working in person at the company’s offices. The hybrid work model refers to working in the office two or three days a week instead of five, and working from home the rest of the time.

In September 2022, more than an hour of Grand Theft Auto VI footage was leaked by hackers who managed to gain access to Rockstar Games’ servers. At the time, the game was in its very early stages, but it was already in action, and it’s sure to break records, especially if it’s released across multiple console generations like Grand Theft Auto V. Last December, GTA VI got its first official trailer, although it had to be released earlier because it was leaked. Still, it received over 90 million views on YouTube in 24 hours, which is a very good result.

Grand Theft Auto VI will most likely not be released in the next fiscal year, i.e. not between April 2024 and the end of March 2025 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox series, but later, but presumably still during 2025, perhaps sometime in the fall, just like GTA V was released in 2013 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It will take place partly in Vice City (a Miami clone) with two main characters, and one of them will be a woman.

But what we don’t understand is whether they’re really forcing workers back into the office for security reasons, or if it’s just management trying to make themselves feel better?

Source: VGC, Bloomberg