Rockstar debacle prompts devs to spotlight their crunch-free games

Rockstar managed to vex the entire games industry this week when studio co-founder Dan Houser suggested to Vulture that some team members had been working 100-hour weeks to polish off Red Dead Redemption 2. 

Houser eventually clarified his remarks, and explained he was only referring to himself and other senior writers when he talked about those long weeks, and that crunch isn't mandated or expected at Rockstar.  

Even so, the whole debacle caused a stir, with devs from across the industry criticizing the impact and normalization of crunch. 

One particularly interesting response came from Vlambeer co-founder Jan Willem Nijman, who started a Twitter thread so developers could spotlight the games they made without crunch, and in some cases tell the stories behind them. 

The result is a glorious thread overflowing with crunch-free games: tasty morsels of entertainment that were created without sacrificing the well-being of those working away behind the scenes. 

There are plenty of familiar names peppered throughout the thread, including acclaimed titles like Minit, Cultist Simulator, Guacamelee 2!, Broken Age, Florence, and Sunless Sea. Of course, there are even more where those came from, so be sure to have a gander at the full thing over on Twitter.