Highlights
- Naughty Dog has long been relying on Linux tools for game development.
- A recently surfaced job listing spotted by Game Rant suggests that some of the company's workstations may still be running Linux, specifically the Ubuntu distro, as of 2024.
- The listing also offers some other insights into Naughty Dog's contemporary game development practices, including its IT department's preferred scripting language.
Naughty Dog developers 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 into Naughty Dog's game development practices.
Although Linux is a fairly popular operating system with 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 Gregory revealed that 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. The Naughty 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, and Windows 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 the ever-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.
Date Founded September 9, 1989 Headquarters Santa Monica, California, United States CEO Neil Druckmann Parent Company Sony Interactive Entertainment , PlayStation Studios Known For Crash Bandicoot , The Last of Us , Jak and Daxter , Uncharted
