Naughty Dog Studio Orders Employee Overtime for ‘Intergalactic’

Employees at Sony Group Corp.’s Naughty Dog studio are working mandatory overtime to finish a demo for their next video game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, reviving an infamous workplace tradition that is increasingly frowned upon across the industry.

For the past seven weeks, the Santa Monica-based studio behind The Last of Us has been pushing its staff to work long hours to get ready for an upcoming review of the demo by its parent company, according to people familiar with the situation. Starting in late October, staff were asked to begin working a minimum of eight extra hours a week and logging their overtime in an internal spreadsheet, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. This overtime period was an attempt to get the production back on track after several missed deadlines.