Sony and Naughty Dog appear to have brought back the festive videogame industry tradition of mandatory overtime. According to reports, the Last Of Us and Uncharted developers have been crunching for the past seven weeks to finish an internal demo for their new sci-fi action game Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
The report in question is from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier (paywall), who claims that team members at the Santa Monica-based studio have been asked to work a minimum of eight extra hours a week since late October. To enforce this, Naughty Dog have also allegedly required staff to work in office five days a week – up from three – logging their overtime in an internal spreadsheet. Some staff have had to make hasty short-term care arrangements for children and pets. Naughty Dog have, at least, told staff not to work more than 60 hours a week.
This overtime period is apparently an attempt to get Intergalactic back on track after several missed deadlines, with the game currently slated for console release in mid-2027. Naughty Dog have long had a reputation for crunch, with staff sometimes needing hospital care as a result, but the Bloomberg piece says that this is the first time in “recent years” that overtime has been mandated across the “bulk” of the studio.
Schreier writes that Naughty Dog introduced a squad of producers in 2021 who were tasked with lessening the load on developers (among other responsibilities), following the gruelling development of The Last of Us: Part II. According to “people familiar with the situation”, however, many of those producers are now gone.
As of this week, most Naughty Dog staff are reportedly now back on normal hours, and management have said that people will once again be able to work two weekdays at home through the end of January, with a more detailed working schedule for 2026 to be presented after the holiday break.
If you’re new to Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, it’s about a stranded bounty hunter investigating the mysteries of a forgotten planet. It’s Naughty Dog’s first non-sequel videogame in a while, which suggests that there will be a lot of pressure from Sony to deliver results.