End of remote work and 60 hours a week. Demo of Naughty Dog's new game was born amid a crunch atmosphere
Naughty Dog was expected to return to the crunch (at least temporarily) to meet the deadline imposed by Sony for the development of Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
It looks like the team at Naughty Dog had to put in some serious overtime and head back to the office to make sure they hit the deadline for their internal demo of Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet by the end of 2025.
The new game from Naughty Dog has yet to reveal its true charms, but Sony is reportedly determined to see the game in action as soon as possible. Jason Schreier obtained this information from Bloomberg through contacts with the developer's employees.
As reported, for the past 7 weeks, Naughty Dog developers have been encouraged to work overtime to prepare a demo version for Sony to test. At the end of October, creators were asked to work at least 8 hours a day (but no more than 60 hours a week) to make up for losses due to many delays and missed deadlines.
Naughty Dog's return to crunch
This is said to be the first such case at Naughty Dog in years. At one time, following reports of many exhausting production processes, Naughty Dog promised to make changes and hire additional devs to limit crunch. However, according to Schreier's sources, many of these individuals have left the studio over the past 4 years.
What's really got people talking is the rumor that Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet won't be hitting PlayStation 5 until mid-2027. So, if mandatory overtime is already a thing, there's a worry that the crunch will only get worse as the deadline for the game, which is supposed to be twice as big as the team's latest major project, gets closer.
Of course, such concerns may be premature. For now, most ND employees have reportedly put the crunch behind them, as the studio managed to complete a demo for Sony, and management has announced a return to a standard work schedule by the end of January 2026. Developers are expected to learn more about the work schedule after the Christmas break.
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Author: Jacob Blazewicz
Graduated with a master's degree in Polish Studies from the University of Warsaw with a thesis dedicated to this very subject. Started his adventure with gamepressure.com in 2015, writing in the Newsroom and later also in the film and technology sections (also contributed to the Encyclopedia). Interested in video games (and not only video games) for years. He began with platform games and, to this day, remains a big fan of them (including Metroidvania). Also shows interest in card games (including paper), fighting games, soulslikes, and basically everything about games as such. Marvels at pixelated characters from games dating back to the time of the Game Boy (if not older).
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