Naughty Dog, LLC (formerly JAM Software, Inc.) is an American game development company based in Santa Monica, California. It was founded in 1984 by Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin in McLean, Virginia. They were acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2001, becoming the subsidiary of SCE Worldwide Studios (currently PlayStation Studios). They are known for creating franchises such as the first four Crash Bandicoot games, Jak and Daxter, Uncharted, and The Last of Us.
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 The one literal top dog in gaming development that we wish would be shot Old Yeller-style.
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Why They Became Naughty Indeed
- Lately, they haven't been able to take constructive criticism very well.
- They mistreated their employees with the use of crunch time during development of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and The Last of Us Part II.
- During TLoU2's development, a construction company working in the same building accidentally dropped a metal pipe down, which could have killed Naughty Dog's crunched employees working the graveyard shift.
- Crunch culture in Naughty Dog existed prior to 2020, with some employees reportedly working 80-100 hour weeks to meet unrealistic deadlines set by incompetent management.
- Jonathan Cooper, former animator at Naughty Dog, claimed there was a report of an employee being hospitalized due to being overworked. Cooper himself also stated that Naughty Dog illegally withheld his last paycheck in an attempt to force him to sign a document prohibiting him from sharing their production practices.
- Evan Wells and Neil Druckmann, the co-presidents of Naughty Dog, oppose worker unions and claim it would not solve the company's inhumane crunch culture. The former stated that a 40-hour work week "would frustrate people to no end. There are people who really want to put in that extra polish on their own volition and they would feel handcuffed."
- They filed fraudulent DMCA claims against critics who talked about The Last of Us Part II leaks.
- They've caused Amy Hennig to depart from the company in 2018 (although many say she was fired), the same person that created the Uncharted franchise, most likely because she outlived her usefulness for Naughty Dog after the last chapter of the Uncharted storyline, The Lost Legacy.
- They have started to milk The Last of Us , as they announced a remake of the first game as The Last of Us Part I, despite the fact that the game is already fine the way it is even with a remaster for the PS4 and still holds up well to this day. Although this may have been Sony's doing given the cancellation of Days Gone 2.
- Naughty Dog seems to have turned away from cartoony games in general in favor of realistic-styled games since they've seemingly abandoned the Jak and Daxter franchise. Apart from re-releases, there's been no new installment in the series since 2009.
- Speaking of which, Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier was a very mediocre game. This is because Naughty Dog made the mistake of leaving development to High Impact Games, which they later regretted.
- Jak 4 was reportedly in development, but unfortunately cancelled in favor of The Last of Us.
- Had Naughty Dog still had the Crash Bandicoot IP, they would've abandoned that franchise as well.
- Neil Druckmann. Despite being talented (as he was the lead director of The Last of Us, along with Bruce Straley), he recently lost his edge in creating powerful narratives and heavy character development and now favors to shoehorn political correctness into their games like Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and recently The Last of Us Part II (though the former two were still great games).
- He has even openly admitted to being a big fan of Anita Sarkeesian, which is just disgraceful.
- Not to mention that he's the one who caused the downfall of Naughty Dog as he's the vice president of this very company.
- They used blatant false advertising to mislead people from discovering Joel's death in The Last of Us 2's trailer by intentionally replacing another character's model with his. Worse, the access media didn't see a problem with that.
- When The Last of Us: Firefly Edition was released, buyers reported that the physical edition had been damaged. They announced a second batch, which sold out because of scalpers.
Redeeming Qualities
- Before Neil Druckmann damaged their reputation, they were a pretty good company.
- While it doesn't look like The Last of Us will be very successful as a franchise, its first installment is amazing.
- It also had a TV adaptation on HBO.
- They've created some of Sony's most beloved and important franchises, such as Crash Bandicoot, Uncharted, and Jak and Daxter, the former being owned by Microsoft now.
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