After *The Last of Us*, is Naughty Dog embroiled in overtime controversy again?

This news feels like an old industry story repeating itself, but when it comes to Naughty Dog, it still carries serious weight. Recently, podcast host Kiwi Talkz spoke with former Uncharted designer Benson Russell, once again pushing the overtime culture at this top-tier studio back into the spotlight. According to the former developer, ever since the first Uncharted launched, each new game Naughty Dog has made has come with even more overtime, until it eventually became the team’s default way of working.

What’s most concerning is not being “busy,” but treating that busyness as something normal and expected. Benson Russell mentioned that in the studio’s early days, management was not completely hands-off; they even required employees to leave before midnight in an attempt to keep working hours from spiraling out of control. But once a project entered its final sprint, that kind of restriction would be blown away by production demands, and the rules became fragile in the face of deadlines. In his words, “Overtime has become part of the studio culture, and it is also the main reason developers leave.”

From the perspective of sports competition, a short burst of effort can win a single match, but you cannot win a championship by draining your physical strength in every game. Game development is no different. Picking up the pace occasionally is a tactic, but sustained high pressure turns talent reserves, team stability, and creative judgment into a war of attrition. For a studio like Naughty Dog in particular—one known for single-player storytelling, cinematic presentation, and exceptional polish—the cost of staff turnover is even higher than outsiders might imagine.

What is even more delicate is that Naughty Dog is not exactly in an easy position right now. Foreign outlet tech4gamers mentioned that the studio is currently advancing multiple single-player games, one related to Uncharted and another being its first brand-new IP in more than a decade, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. The report also said that the development team for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet has clearly accelerated since the beginning of last year, which has raised concerns that Naughty Dog may have slipped back into that highly controversial development rhythm once again.

The most jarring point here comes from the shift in the studio’s internal mindset after the release of The Last of Us. Former developers recalled that after that, the team gradually came to see intense overtime as an unavoidable cost of making high-quality games, and that this attitude was even conveyed explicitly in meetings: if you want to make a game of the same caliber, you have to pay the same price. The problem is that while this mindset may produce blockbuster hits in the short term, in the long run it can cause a studio to lose the very people best at making them.

From a player’s perspective, I naturally hope Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet can deliver the pace and intensity of Naughty Dog’s new-generation single-player games, but I hope even more that it will not achieve that by continuously overworking its developers. The attitude in player communities toward this kind of news is also becoming increasingly clear: people are still willing to pay for great games, but they are no longer willing to treat the “overtime myth” as a badge of honor. A truly mature industry should not only care about the applause at the finish line, but also whether the people who ran the whole race are still able to step onto the field again.