Summary
Naughty Dogdevelopers may still rely on Linux tools and workstations for making games. That’s suggested by some newly emerged evidence that offers a number of up-to-date insights intoNaughty Dog’s game development practices.
AlthoughLinux is a fairly popular operating systemwith all kinds of software developers, it is not exactly the dominant OS among today’s game studios. That’s especially true in the PlayStation space, not least because the official development environment for Sony’s consoles is primarily designed to run on Windows.
Some of Naughty Dog’s Workstations Are Running Linux Distro Ubuntu
Nevertheless, at least one of the Japanese company’s subsidiaries has long been partial to Linux tools. That would be Naughty Dog, which last confirmed its reliance on the open-source operating system back in 2014. On that occasion, Lead Programmer Jason Gregoryrevealedthat the studio’s game development workflow uses “a lot of Linux,” predominantly due to its powerful command line tools. That state of affairs might not have changed much a decade later, according to one recently published job opening. TheNaughty Dog listing, reviewed by Game Rant, advertises an IT help desk technician role, for which knowledge of the Linux distro Ubuntu is considered a plus.
Granted, the nature of the role does not necessarily confirm that the PlayStation studio is still using Linux tools for game development. That’s primarily because the advertised position is geared toward building and deploying workstations rather than actually using them to make games. But the contents of the listing do imply that Naughty Dog’s contemporary workstations are a mixture of Linux, Windows 10, andWindows 11 machines.
The job ad also hints at some of the structured query, scripting, and programming languages that are presently in use at the company, with that list including Bash, PowerShell, and theever-versatile Python. All of those can be utilized on either Windows or Linux workstations, though the Bash command language is traditionally most commonly used on Unix-based operating systems such as macOS and Linux itself.
Elaborating on the specifics of Naughty Dog’s workstation setup practices, the recently published listing suggests that these processes are partially automated, at least as far as software deployment is concerned. That’s a fairly unsurprising revelation, as automation has long been the name of the game in IT, with its importance and benefits growing proportionally with the size of any given company. Naughty Dog’s workforce is over 400 strong as of mid-2024, so the studio is naturally inclined to automate as many of its deployment practices as possible.
