"Months After Labor Controversy, Rockstar Converts Game-Testers To Full-Time", 7 August 2019

Workers at Rockstar Lincoln, the British studio that does...testing for the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption games, are being converted from contractors to full-time employees...

...The move will remove the uncertainty of working on temporary contracts...It’s unclear how many people this affects, nor whether it extends to temporary workers at other Rockstar studios...a company rep declined to comment.

This...appears to be an improvement at a studio where full-time and contract workers...felt the brunt of the company’s crunch culture. Last October, a Kotaku report... highlighted Lincoln as one of the toughest places to work. A Lincoln employee had told us that the testing team had been working mandatory overtime...and Rockstar confirmed...testers had been asked to work on evenings and weekends.

...Kotaku had also reported last year that testers...weren’t allowed to keep their cell phones at their desks...This policy, a source now tells us, has been rescinded...Rockstar is also experimenting with “flex-time,” two of the sources said, allowing workers to shift when they do their assigned work hours...