Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic Aiming For Mid-2027 Release Amid New Crunch Allegations – Report

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I just heard some concerning news about Naughty Dog. Apparently, they’ve recently asked employees to come back to the office full-time – they were previously only going in three days a week. And to top it off, it sounds like they’ve been really pushing everyone to work extra-long hours to finish a demo of their new game, ‘Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet,’ for Sony executives. It’s a bit worrying to hear, honestly.

According to a Bloomberg report, Naughty Dog began requesting employees work at least eight extra hours per week starting in late October. Staff were asked to track this overtime on a spreadsheet. The report states this push for extra hours was an effort to get the project back on schedule after several deadlines were missed.

So, the report said we weren’t supposed to work more than 60 hours a week, which is good, I guess. Getting called back into the office was a real pain, honestly. A lot of us had to scramble for childcare and even figure out what to do with our pets! Thankfully, that whole crazy period of mandatory overtime finally wrapped up this week now that the demo is finished. It’s been a rough few weeks, but we finally got there.

Sony and Naughty Dog declined to comment when approached by Bloomberg.

According to the report, Naughty Dog created a new team of producers in 2021 to reduce excessive overtime, often called “crunch.” However, many of those producers have since left the company.

The report concludes that Naughty Dog is targeting a mid-2027 release for Intergalactic. However, employees are worried that they’ll be expected to work even longer hours as the launch date approaches.

In a 2020 interview with GQ, Naughty Dog’s studio head, Neil Druckmann, addressed the intense work periods—often called ‘crunch’—experienced by developers at the studio. He stated that while they need to protect employees from burnout and injury, demanding hard work is essential to creating the high-quality games Naughty Dog is known for.

In 2021, Evan Wells, a leader at Naughty Dog, explained that his employees often want to work more than the standard 40-hour week. He believes limiting their time in the office to just 40 hours would be discouraging, and he doesn’t think forming a union would be beneficial.

Naughty Dog, the studio behind popular games like Uncharted and The Last of Us, is creating a brand new game called Intergalactic. This is a big step, as they’ve primarily focused on sequels for the last twenty years. Intergalactic is a sci-fi adventure that promises to be their most imaginative story to date, centering around Jordan A. Mun, a bounty hunter who finds themselves stuck on the planet Sempiria.

Naughty Dog has several teams working on different projects, and one of them might be developing The Last of Us: Part III.

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2025-12-18 23:41