Naughty Dog employees spent the past seven weeks working mandatory overtime to complete an internal demo of Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet for Sony’s review, according to a Bloomberg report published December 18, 2025. Starting in late October, developers were required to work a minimum of eight extra hours weekly and log their overtime in an internal spreadsheet as the studio scrambled to meet deadlines after multiple missed targets. The mandatory overtime period just ended this week as the demo was finalized, but the revelation reignites conversations about crunch culture at a studio with a notorious history of burning out employees despite promises to change.
Eight Hours Weekly But Nothing More Than 60 Total
The mandatory overtime requirements established in late October specified that Intergalactic developers must work at least eight additional hours each week beyond their standard 40-hour schedules. However, Naughty Dog management also instructed employees not to exceed 60 total hours per week, creating a narrow window where overtime was mandatory but excessive overtime was discouraged. Bloomberg’s sources, who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly, described the period as an attempt to get production back on track after several missed internal deadlines.
Alongside the overtime requirements, Naughty Dog mandated that staff work from the office five days per week instead of the previous three-day hybrid arrangement. This sudden shift from partial work-from-home to full in-office presence disrupted employees who had built their lives around the flexible schedule. Some developers had to scramble to arrange childcare and pet care for the additional days they’d now be physically at the studio instead of home, creating logistical nightmares on top of the extended work hours.
The mandatory overtime period concluded this week as Naughty Dog finalized the internal demo for Sony’s review. According to Bloomberg’s report, management informed employees that the studio will return to requiring just three days per week in-office through the end of January 2026. A more comprehensive schedule for 2026 will be shared after the holiday season, though employees reportedly worry this recent crunch period foreshadows worse to come as Intergalactic approaches its mid-2027 target release date.
The Metal Coins That Said the Quiet Part Out Loud
Earlier this year, before the mandatory overtime period began, Naughty Dog management distributed commemorative metal coins to members of the Intergalactic production team. One side featured the Naughty Dog paw logo. The other side displayed a quote pulled directly from the game’s reveal trailer: The suffering of generations must be endured to achieve our divine end. Multiple commentators described this as one of the most tone-deaf gestures in recent gaming industry memory, essentially handing employees a token glorifying suffering right before asking them to endure mandatory overtime.
The irony of management giving coins celebrating suffering to people they would soon overwork is almost too perfect to be real, yet Bloomberg confirmed the coins exist and were distributed. Critics on social media compared it to a prop from a dystopian fiction where villains openly acknowledge exploiting workers. One developer quoted in various reports said the coins felt less like team-building gifts and more like management accidentally revealing how little they value employee wellbeing beneath the corporate speak about passion and craft.
The quote itself comes from Intergalactic’s reveal trailer shown at The Game Awards 2024, where it’s delivered by what appears to be an antagonist or morally ambiguous character. Using a line about enduring suffering to achieve goals as inspirational messaging for your development team sends a message, intentional or not, about how management views the relationship between worker sacrifice and company success. Whether anyone at Naughty Dog recognized the optics before distributing the coins remains unclear, but the timing makes them look particularly bad in retrospect.
A Studio With a Notorious Crunch Reputation
Naughty Dog’s culture of crunch isn’t new or secret. The studio has been openly discussed as one of the industry’s worst offenders for over a decade, with crunch periods documented during development of Uncharted 4, The Last of Us, and especially The Last of Us Part II. A comprehensive 2020 Kotaku investigation revealed that 70 percent of non-lead designers who worked on Uncharted 4 had left the studio by the time The Last of Us Part II entered production, with attrition primarily driven by burnout from unsustainable work hours.
The Kotaku report painted a picture of a studio where crunch isn’t mandated because management explicitly asks for it. Instead, Naughty Dog deliberately hires perfectionists who will naturally stay late perfecting their work without being told. Nobody asks developers to crunch. Nobody has to ask. They’ll be there anyway, driven by personal standards and studio culture that rewards those who sacrifice everything for the game. As one developer told Kotaku, It’s an amazing creative environment, but you can’t go home.
During The Last of Us Part II development, reports emerged of developers working 12-hour days and weekends for months on end. Some were hospitalized due to stress and exhaustion. When the game was delayed from February 2020 to May 2020, employees had hoped the extra time would provide breathing room. Instead, it just meant three more months of crunch. The game released to critical acclaim and commercial success, winning multiple Game of the Year awards, but the human cost of that success became impossible to ignore.
The Empty Promises That Crunch Would End
In 2021, Naughty Dog co-presidents Evan Wells and Neil Druckmann addressed crunch concerns in a Game Informer interview, acknowledging the problem while defending their hiring philosophy. They stated they wanted to prevent burnout but didn’t want to impose one-size-fits-all restrictions on employee passion and creativity. Wells said Naughty Dog hires a particular type of person who’s motivated and passionate and wants to leave their mark on the industry, implying crunch is a natural byproduct of ambitious developers rather than management failure.
More recently in 2024, Naughty Dog quality assurance lead Patrick Goss made explicit promises during employee onboarding. When we onboard people, we tell them that we have a reputation as a studio for crunching, and it’s something that we don’t want. And it’s something we’re not going to do anymore. That quote, made less than two years ago, now rings hollow given Bloomberg’s report of mandatory overtime throughout late 2025. Employees who joined the studio based on assurances that crunch was a thing of the past now find themselves working mandatory overtime regardless.
The fact that this represents Naughty Dog’s first mandatory overtime period in years, according to Bloomberg, suggests the studio did make genuine efforts to change. However, the reversion to mandatory crunch when facing deadline pressure demonstrates that fundamental cultural problems remain unresolved. When push comes to shove and internal demos are late, management still falls back on asking employees to work extra hours rather than adjusting scope, extending timelines, or hiring additional staff to share the burden.
What This Means for Intergalactic’s 2027 Release
Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet was announced at The Game Awards 2024 and is internally targeting a mid-2027 release, approximately two and a half years from now. If the game is already experiencing mandatory overtime periods to complete internal demos in late 2025, what happens as the team approaches actual release? Bloomberg’s sources expressed concern that mandated crunch will get even worse down the road, suggesting this recent overtime period might be mild compared to what comes later in development.
The game has been in development for approximately four years so far, according to Neil Druckmann’s statements. By the time it releases in 2027, it will have been in production for roughly six years total. That timeline is substantial but not unprecedented for AAA games, especially from prestigious studios like Naughty Dog. However, six years of development with mandatory crunch periods sprinkled throughout raises questions about whether the studio has fundamentally changed its approach or just manages optics better between crisis periods.
Intergalactic features an impressive cast including Tati Gabrielle as protagonist Jordan A. Mun, Kumail Nanjiani, Tony Dalton, and The Last of Us alumni Ashley Scott and Troy Baker in unrevealed roles. The game is set thousands of years in the future where Jordan, a dangerous bounty hunter, becomes stranded on Sempiria, a planet that went dark hundreds of years ago. She must use all her skills to become the first person in over 600 years to leave its orbit. Whether this ambitious sci-fi premise can be realized without destroying the team making it remains the central concern.
The Industry-Wide Crunch Problem That Never Ends
Naughty Dog’s situation reflects broader gaming industry dysfunction where crunch remains standard practice despite years of criticism and calls for reform. CD Projekt Red faced massive backlash for Cyberpunk 2077’s crunch conditions. Rockstar employees worked 100-hour weeks on Red Dead Redemption 2. BioWare developers burned out during Anthem and Dragon Age Inquisition’s troubled productions. The list of studios with documented crunch problems includes virtually every major AAA developer at some point.
What makes crunch so persistent is the combination of factors that no single solution addresses. Publishers demand games meet marketing deadlines tied to fiscal quarters and holiday shopping seasons. Studio leadership sets ambitious creative visions that exceed realistic production timelines. Developers feel personal ownership over their work and willingly sacrifice health to meet self-imposed standards. And the threat of layoffs or studio closures if games underperform financially creates existential pressure where crunch feels preferable to unemployment.
Unionization efforts have gained momentum in response to crunch culture, with workers at studios like Raven Software, ZeniMax, and others successfully forming unions. However, Naughty Dog leadership has historically been tepid about unionization. Evan Wells, who retired in 2023, seemed resistant to unions as a solution for crunch during his tenure. Whether current leadership under Neil Druckmann will take different approaches remains unclear, but the recent mandatory overtime suggests substantial cultural change hasn’t occurred despite public commitments.
FAQs
Why did Naughty Dog order mandatory overtime?
Naughty Dog ordered mandatory overtime starting in late October 2025 to complete an internal demo of Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet for Sony’s review after missing multiple deadlines. Developers were required to work at least eight extra hours weekly, though not exceeding 60 total hours per week.
When did the Naughty Dog mandatory overtime end?
The mandatory overtime period ended in mid-December 2025 as Naughty Dog finalized the internal demo. The studio announced employees would return to the previous three-days-per-week in-office requirement through January 2026, with a more detailed 2026 schedule coming after holidays.
What were the metal coins Naughty Dog gave employees?
Earlier in 2025, Naughty Dog distributed commemorative metal coins to Intergalactic production team members featuring the studio logo on one side and the game quote The suffering of generations must be endured to achieve our divine end on the other. Critics called this tone-deaf given the subsequent mandatory overtime.
Does Naughty Dog have a history of crunch?
Yes, Naughty Dog has been notorious for crunch culture for over a decade. A 2020 Kotaku investigation documented severe crunch during The Last of Us Part II development, with developers working 12-hour days and weekends for months. About 70 percent of non-lead designers left the studio between Uncharted 4 and TLOU2.
When does Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet release?
Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is internally targeting a mid-2027 release, according to Bloomberg and industry insiders. The game was announced at The Game Awards 2024 and has been in development for approximately four years so far.
Did Naughty Dog promise to stop crunching?
Yes, in 2024, Naughty Dog quality assurance lead Patrick Goss stated during employee onboarding that the studio tells new hires crunch is something we don’t want and it’s something we’re not going to do anymore. However, the recent mandatory overtime contradicts those promises.
How many hours were Naughty Dog employees required to work?
Employees were required to work a minimum of eight extra hours per week on top of standard 40-hour schedules, but instructed not to exceed 60 total hours weekly. They also had to work in-office five days per week instead of the previous three-day hybrid arrangement.
What is Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet about?
Intergalactic is a sci-fi action game set thousands of years in the future where players control Jordan A. Mun, a bounty hunter stranded on Sempiria, a planet that went dark 600 years ago. She must escape a world no one has left in centuries.
Conclusion
The revelation that Naughty Dog ordered mandatory overtime for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet’s internal demo demonstrates that crunch culture at one of Sony’s most prestigious studios remains alive despite years of criticism and promises to change. Seven weeks of mandatory eight-hour overtime, combined with sudden shifts to five-day in-office requirements that disrupted employees’ childcare and personal arrangements, proves that when deadlines loom and pressure mounts, management still defaults to asking workers to sacrifice more rather than fundamentally rethinking production approaches.
The metal coins celebrating suffering take on almost satirical meaning in this context. Whether management understood the message they were sending when distributing tokens quoting the game’s line about enduring suffering to achieve divine ends, the symbolism is unmistakable. Here’s a coin glorifying sacrifice for the greater good, and by the way, you’ll be working mandatory overtime soon. The disconnect between public commitments to end crunch and private reversion to mandatory overtime when convenient reveals how little has actually changed beneath surface-level acknowledgments that crunch is bad.
What makes this particularly concerning is the timeline. If Intergalactic is still years away from release but already experiencing mandatory overtime periods to hit internal milestones, what happens during the final year of development? Bloomberg’s sources worry this recent crunch is mild compared to what’s coming, and history suggests they’re probably right. Every Naughty Dog game for the past decade has involved documented severe crunch during final production phases. Why would Intergalactic be different?
The industry-wide nature of crunch makes solving it incredibly difficult. It’s not just Naughty Dog. It’s CD Projekt Red, Rockstar, BioWare, Bungie, and countless other studios that periodically work developers to exhaustion while producing critically acclaimed games. The awards and sales success validate the approach from management’s perspective, creating perverse incentives where human costs get rationalized as necessary sacrifices for artistic achievement. Until crunch meaningfully impacts studios’ bottom lines through poor sales or talent exodus that cripples development, management has little financial motivation to change.
Unionization represents one potential solution, giving workers collective bargaining power to refuse unreasonable overtime demands without facing individual retaliation. However, major studios including Naughty Dog have shown resistance to unions, and even unionized game workers face uphill battles against corporations with vastly more resources and lawyers. The recent wave of unionization at various studios offers hope that power dynamics might shift, but change will be incremental and hard-fought rather than sudden industry-wide transformation.
For employees who joined Naughty Dog based on 2024 promises that crunch was over, this mandatory overtime period represents betrayal. They made life decisions including relocation, housing choices, and family planning based on assurances that the studio culture had changed. Finding out those promises evaporate when deadlines get missed creates legitimate anger beyond just being asked to work extra hours. It’s the dishonesty that compounds the injury, being told one thing during recruitment and experiencing something different once you’re committed.
Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet will likely be an exceptional game when it releases in mid-2027. Naughty Dog consistently delivers technically impressive, narratively ambitious experiences that push boundaries of what AAA games can achieve. But at what cost? How many developers will leave the studio burned out? How many family dinners will be missed? How many health problems will emerge from sustained stress? And most importantly, did it have to be this way, or could the game have been just as good with reasonable work hours and adjusted timelines?
The mandatory overtime period has ended for now, with employees returning to standard schedules through January. But this reprieve feels temporary, a brief calm before the storm intensifies as 2027 approaches. The suffering of generations must be endured to achieve our divine end, the coins say. Except the suffering is real people’s burnout, and the divine end is a video game that could have been made without destroying the team. Whether Naughty Dog learns anything from this latest crunch cycle or continues business as usual remains to be seen. Based on the studio’s history, cautious pessimism seems warranted.