Cyberpunk 2077 is nearing completion, and we’ll be getting the game on November 19. However, that might come at a humongous effort from the developers during the last few laps of the development lifecycle. CDPR developers would now be grinding six-workday weeks now in order to ensure the release happens on November 19 as expected. Apparently, the upper management never took the opinion of the developers on whether they wanted six-workday weeks or another delay. The news comes straight from Jason Schreier, who has talked to some of these developers who are grinding through to get the game out as we speak.
To clear up another point, I asked a couple of CDPR devs if it’s true that the majority of them wanted six-day weeks over a delay. They said that conversation never took place. One: “We got the email and then a meeting with our team leaders. It was never an option or question”
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) October 9, 2020
According to Jason, it is surprising that so many people are in denial of the fact that crunch is a reality at CD Projekt Red. The crunch period for The Witcher 3 was “inhumane”, spoken by none other than CDPR co-founder Marcin Iwiński. In fact, the outrage following the knowledge about the abysmal compensation and the tremendous work requirements at CDPR had prompted them to promise “more humane working conditions” – apparently to no avail. Jason had revealed himself that crunch will absolutely be a thing as Cyberpunk 2077 has gone gold, and every small effort is needed to ensure the game is as polished as possible when it comes out.
Studio head Adam Badowski had promised a 10% share in the yearly revenues of the company for the extra effort put in during the last development phase of Cyberpunk 2077. However, announcing a “mandatory” crunch without taking the opinion of the workers shows off the company in an extremely poor light, to say the least.
We expected better, CD Projekt Red.
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