An email from Rockstar Head of Publishing Jenn Kolbe that was seen by Bloomberg notes that the RTO mandate is for "productivity" reasons. That's the contentious answer...
Ah, yes, productivity. Whenever we spend a day at the office, we inevitably spend at least half an hour doing coffee/tea breaks, often more.
And in between coffee breaks, you'll be wearing that headset and working with one another, as you do when at home, because management didn't either miss out on the productivity boost to put people from different company locations into one team, if their expertise matches.
You may all be at 'the' office, but as soon as one person is at a different office, you're all wearing headsets and might as well do so without a shitty commute.
I hate being in the office. Not only did they remind all the cubicles so now I feel like a mouse without a place to hide its noiser than ever. I'm on calls all day and guess what, I talk loud so now they force me to go to tiny timeout room to do calls. So dumb.
Plus people end up talking to me about thier husbands and sports so it just eats up time I rather spend at home doing w/e I want.
I don't even have to interact with my team on a daily basis. It's stupid.
This is just a soft layoff. Guarantee there are some post-launch bonuses they don't want to pay out. This is about pushing people out without havieg to pay them severance.
Now this is going to be a test of how much people value the time they actually have for themselves, since commuting and preparing for it takes a huge chunk out of an already long work day.