Despite Previous Promises, CD Projekt Red Will Crunch Devs On Cyberpunk 2077

Despite being promised otherwise, developers hard at work on the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 will be crunching to meet its November release date, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reports.

On Monday, studio head Adam Badowski informed employees via that they will be forced to work six-day weeks on the hotly anticipated game.

“Starting today,” Badowski wrote, “the entire studio is in overdrive.” He informed employees that their extra work entailed a “typical amount of work and one day of the weekend.”

Badowski went on in trying to justify the decision. “I take it upon myself to receive the full backlash for this decision. I know this is in direct opposition to what we’ve said about crunch […] but we’ve extended all other possible means of navigating the situation.”

The internal email, shared by an anonymous employee, paints a picture of broken promises at the studio. This same employee told Schreier that employees have actually already been crunching, with staff regularly putting in nights and weekends for well over a year. Despite promises, made publicly and in private, it certainly seems as if the developer hasn’t made good on their assurances.

While the weekend overtime will be paid, that can be chalked up purely to Polish labor laws. Without those laws in place, it’s hard to say if that would be the case.

At any rate, this is another disheartening story to come out of the fraught studio. Last year, both Badowski and co-chief Marcin Iwinski assured Kotaku that CD Projekt Red would become a more “humane” place to work, emphasizing that they’d like to extend their reputation for “treating gamers with respect” to their employees as well.

As of this writing, CD Projekt Red hasn’t commented on the report. We’ll keep you posted when (or if) they do.

Source: Read Full Article