Capping off a week during which Rockstar Game's New York team was unfavorably described as an Eye of Sauron overlooking its development studios, the company just posted some new editions to its wallpaper series.
The company entitled the three-image series: "The Eye Is Watching."
Earlier in the week, an anonymous ex-Rockstar employee described to MTV the dynamic between Rockstar's New York headquarters and satellite studios such as Rock Star San Diego, the development studio behind the upcoming Red Dead Redemption. They likened the New York office to "The Eye of Sauron" the watchful presence of the evil overlord in The Lord of the Rings.
Rockstar has had no comment for Kotaku regarding last week's allegations of unfair working conditions at the company. Those complaints were levied a week ago by an anonymous blogger claiming to represent disgruntled wives of overworked Rockstar San Diego employees. They were published on a Gamasutra user blog called "Rockstar Spouse" and were followed by other anonymous complaints that the development studio behind Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar San Diego, was experiencing an unprecedented run of mandatory and unhealthy crunch-time development. Some Internet commenters have countered, saying the Rockstar Spouse complaints pertain to common industry practices that are the price of making video games.
Kotaku sought new comment this morning from Rockstar about the validity of what appeared to be a leaked memo distributed by Rockstar management regarding those allegations. The company has not provided comment on that either.
That week of official public silence makes today's artwork the first public reference — however indirect — by the company to the Rockstar Spouse situation. There's a San Diego hook to the image. The domes in the shot appear to resemble those of the San Onofre nuclear power plant located just outside of San Diego, home city to the developers of Red Dead Redemption.
The wallpapers appeared as part of Rockstar's recurring series of desktop backgrounds available for download on the company' s official site.