End of remote work and 60 hours a week. Demo of Naughty Dog’s new game was born amid a crunch atmosphere

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Apparently, the team at Naughty Dog worked extra hours and returned to the office to finish their internal demo of Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet by the end of 2025.

Naughty Dog’s latest game hasn’t fully shown what it’s capable of yet, but Sony is eager to see it in action quickly. Bloomberg reported this, citing sources close to the game’s development team.

For the last seven weeks, developers at Naughty Dog have been working extra hours to finish a demo for Sony. In late October, they were asked to put in at least 8 hours of work each day, up to a maximum of 60 hours per week, to catch up after several delays and missed targets.

Naughty Dog’s return to crunch

This is reportedly the first instance of this kind at Naughty Dog in several years. Previously, after concerns were raised about demanding working conditions, Naughty Dog pledged to improve things and bring on more developers to reduce excessive crunch time. But according to sources for journalist Jason Schreier, many of those newly hired developers have since left the company over the last four years.

The big news is that the game Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet might not be released on PlayStation 5 until the middle of 2027. This has people concerned that the already demanding work conditions will get even tougher, especially since the game is expected to be much larger in scope than the team’s previous big project.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-55915

It’s possible these worries are too early. Currently, most employees at the studio seem to have finished the most intense period of work, having successfully completed a demo for Sony. Management has announced they plan to return to a regular work schedule by the end of January 2026, and developers should receive more details about this schedule after the Christmas holiday.

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2025-12-19 17:02