A Bold Claim From CDPR
CD Projekt Red have come under significant criticism lately, as it’s been revealed that despite claiming that crunch time wouldn’t be mandatory for their upcoming game Cyberpunk 2077, they were in fact mandating mandatory overtime, with employees required to work their regular workweek plus one day on the weekend, Despite this, at least one employee reportedly pulling 100 workweeks to ensure the game would release on time, and one report stating that crunch has been in effect for much longer than previously thought.
https://t.co/Ie5W0O7iiv pic.twitter.com/IJBZ3IIT6m
— Adam Badowski⚡️ (@AdamBadowski) September 30, 2020
However, in a recent call with investors, co-CEO Adam Kiciński claimed that the situation has been exaggerated and, while mandatory overtime is in effect, it isn’t affecting the whole development team.
“Of course it’s a story that has been picked up by the media, and some people have been crunching heavily, but a large part of the team is not crunching at all since they have finished their work,” Kiciński said.
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There’s definitely some sense in what Kiciński says, but the issue is that at least some workers could potentially have taken on some extra responsibilities to alleviate the workload on those who are required to work late.
Kiciński also state that he’s comfortable, but not entirely confident with the new release date. The latest delay was reportedly imposed to ensure that the game plays well on all platforms, with the current-gen of consoles reportedly suffering some performance issues. Given that the game was originally due to be released well before the next generation of consoles but has slowly approached the release of the Xbox Series X and PS5, it makes sense that they’ve put a high focus on how the console will play on them, but it appears that they’ve let the current consoles fall by the wayside to an extent.
Are you excited for Cyberpunk 2077? Let us know down in the comments.