-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Cyberpunk 2077 Dev Team Will Work Extra Long Hours After Latest Delay
- Thread starter Deleted member 59955
- Start date
the problem is the content creep.
if they delay it a year, is a year of new things to do and add and fix and code. a huge game like this there's a LOT of cut content and if they delay it longer, more and more of this cut content comes back.
this is a serious management culture problem in the industry, the scope is never really final.
So what's the metascore where you draw the line on sticking to your principles?
This is a joke post right?
Well it seems unionising doesn't have much of an effect either, because if it did movie industry wouldn't have crunch but from what I've been told in this thread they can be even worse.
They wrote on their twitter that the game is done and is just a matter of doing so fixes but if their still doing crunch that could mean
1. the fixes are pretty severe
2. Not completely admitting about the game being done
3. next gen consoles
1. the fixes are pretty severe
2. Not completely admitting about the game being done
3. next gen consoles
It is required by law to compensate for every hour of overtime in Poland. Its not EU law, its polish labor code.
There is also a cap on how many overhours that you are allowed to do per year. And there is a limit on how long days you can work (meaning you are forced to sleep before you can go back to the office).
If the rest of their statement is to be taken at face value then I honestly believe that content creep would be well managed and be diverted to DLC content post launch because as it is, QA testing for a game that is denser than TW3 sounds like a campaign on nightmare difficulty.
I will, however, agree that this is linked to management of biting more than they can chew issue and it is not just CDPR. On the flip side though, CDPR are one of the few studios who have earned the right to be trusted with complex world building, albeit with their share of bugs at launch.
Again, I am not in their shoes and so while it is easy for me to sit back and criticize their culture or work/management ethnics, most of us looking from the outside simply do not possess sufficient information to suggest amendments for a better way to deal with this. For all we know, their current course of action is the lesser of all the evils they had to choose from. And again, that does not negate all the exhaustion and misery this may most likely bring over the 9 months.
I honestly believe that creative industry with their continually shifting technology, QA fixing, feedback loop, schedules of all involved, final touches and polish etc, can never ever truly get away from the crunch (towards the end of the project). However, they can mitigate it by making amendments to work schedules, no. of people working on each project, streamlining software (which has evolved greatly over the last two decades to minimize delays), mandatory overtime hour payments etc.
Last edited:
So your disgust of crunch will subside by the possible result of harsh working conditions? Consequently rewarding them. How did this pass you mental assessment before you posted? Where's you moral backbone?
I don't get why you delay it to the first slot of the holiday then crunch instead of giving your team all of September and October to work. CD Projekt's fiscal year is just the calendar year so they'd still have all of November and December to get the sales they need.
This absolutely sucks but I don't know how it can be fixed. It's utterly endemic to the entire industry.
Yep. People going on about how they won't buy the game now are just being hypocritical. Unless you plan on boycotting every AAA game, and that means TLOU2 since Naughty Dog is also guilty of crunch, saying you won't buy games made through crunch means you won't buy AAA games at all. It's a garbage situation that is industry wise and would require government intervention to fix.
How hot is this game coming in if two months before release they not only need to push it back six months, but all six of those months will be crunch?
This. It sucks that employees put in extra hours but I don't know a single industry that doesn't have this. And that's top to bottom, not just the bottom workers. I'm an accountant and 1/3 of the year is 10-12 hour days 6 days a week, and there's not much you can do to mitigate that, its just the nature of the work.
I've heard people say that's the case in Poland, but it's certainly not true across all of Europe.
Please don't force a ton of overtime on an already stressed out group of people just so we can play a game a little sooner, just take your time and make a great game CDPR.
Until the day comes where they isn't always another few thousand gamer kids graduating with computer science degrees that would give their left nut to work in the games industry since its their "dream job" (and whose dream hasn't been crushed yet), and take the job away for less pay from any "vet" who dares to complain about cruch time- any unionization would be powerless.
Not saying its right, just stating what is.
Only thing I think that would truly work in the industry is a paradigm shift among management itself inside of devs that decides to not crunch in the first place. Some actual real moral fiber and doing the right thing.
But, as is, it would take gamers actually taking stands against companies, boycotting games coming from companies who crunch, combined mass online shaming of these brands, and attracting real mainstream media attention on the problem (which hasn't really happened yet.) for real change to happen within the titans of our industry. Sure you might see an odd Kotaku arcticle about the problem, but we need freaking ABC/CBS/NBC news and 20/20 specials on the subject.
As for gamers themselves... Basically, don't buy Cyberpunk. Anyone with me? (crickets) I thought so. (just kidding, I'll be playing Cyberpunk in September with everyone else) But seriously, we are all part of the problem.
Always will be a level of crunch with project deadlines, the issues comes when crunch isn't manageable.
They could alternatively cut some of the content and release is as DLC or free DLC later if they really need money that soon.
I recognize the expense in delaying, but CDPR's ambition keeps coming at the cost of their employees when it doesn't have to. Witcher 3 was way bigger than it needed to be and I'm imagining Cyberpunk will wind up in a similar route.
What a journey this was
kotaku.com
CD Projekt Red Boss Again Promises That Cyberpunk Devs Won't Have To Crunch
Following an impressive showcase from Cyberpunk 2077 this week at E3 in Los Angeles, CD Projekt Red boss Marcin Iwiński joined Kotaku Splitscreen to talk about crunch, recent controversy over transgender issues, and whether GOG is in trouble.
kotaku.com
It sounds like if they were willing to offer more money to attract a more experienced producer maybe that person could have scheduled development more efficiently and they wouldn't have had to delay the game and force everyone on the team to crunch hellish hours.
Coming in extremely hot like all other AAA games. I've never seen a big production that wasn't being crammed into a date, even after delays, with a pile of known defects as long as your leg.
The only one I've always been curious about is Breath of the Wild, as I know they were extremely proactive about bugs during production. But I bet even Nintendo didn't dodge the crunch and/or death march.
Don't kid yourself - any large scope game is probably coming in blazing hot, especially if the publisher announced the date early.
TLDR: Crunch sucks and it always effects the workers at the "bottom" of the company totem pole the worst. I personally believe, after seeing multiple AAA video game projects, that crunch is absolutely almost always a sign of inefficient management and project planning when it occurs and it has a real human cost that can take a lot out of people.
As someone who has crunched on a tangentially related AAA game (that I cannot name) that was delayed twice (the first time for about 8 months, second for another few weeks) I do not think of crunch as something that always has to be a bad thing if it is well managed. The problem is that keeping crunch well managed is notoriously difficult, and there tends to be at least a couple (if not many) inexperienced managers in the chain that really hurt their teams.
In my case, initial "crunch" for my team (QA) on the project was nothing crazy: the managers and leads had to readjust their schedules to cover a newly formed night team, and we moved to a night and day team. This eventually moved to a night, day and skeleton hour team (i.e. almost 24/7 coverage) and even that was mostly fine, since people were not asked to work more than 40 hours a week (aside from some managers who felt obligated to do so, but that's a management style I'll never understand).
Everything seemed fine until about 6 months prior to release, where members of the team started burning out (burn out on a project is normal in QA, it is extremely difficult to play a game you might not like 40 hours a week for extended periods of time, nevermind the fact that some people had been on the project for YEARS at that point) and shrinking because my company had signed a bunch more contracts meaning other projects needed more people.
From that point forward, we were never told we HAD to do overtime, but there was an unsaid expectation both from management (for performance review reasons) and teammates (so they werent stuck doing all the OT) to do at least a little bit of extended hours, and these extended hours initially started with either working an extra 2-3 hours by staying late and then as release drew closer things kept getting added on such as:
1) Saturdays would suddenly open up as a possible workday, starting with half days and eventually becoming full days. A few weeks after that, Sundays were added too.
2) The 2-3 hours once a week I mentioned earlier became 2-3 hours available every day.
At the peak of the overtime craze on our project, I worked 72 hours a week for about a month straight. While I definitely got paid extra and made good money, I was willing to work myself to the bone at the time because I was trying to forget a bad breakup and I also at the time knew it would further my career. It absolutely did too since doing all of that overtime also gave me a good reputation around the office and was worn as a badge of honor, as every time I interviewed for a position to move up at the company from that point forward, the 72 hours every week for a month became an easy answer to the question "Are you dedicated to your projects and willing to see them through?"
After working on and seeing multiple similar projects: "Crunch" can be well managed by adept and highly skilled managers with minimal impact to the team however a large amount of the time it initially starts off as something well planned but all of the wheels fall off the cart at some point.
There is a real human impact to crunch and societal and team pressure are very real things, especially when you are at the lower end of the totem pole and horror stories are spread around the office about people being put on-call (i.e. let go unless needed for emergency work) because they weren't "team players". I was able to leverage the fact that I did a crazy amount of crunch (plus other skills) into a lot of job mobility for myself, but once I got to manage my own teams I quickly learned that my bosses (back when I was low on the totem pole) were under pressure from their bosses to get certain people to crunch because the client (we were outsourced QA) wanted specific, skilled people on the project at all times and did not want to bring in people who did not know the project (since commonly someone new to the project was either brand new and had to be trained or was someone off another project that had to learn the rules and methods of ours).
As someone who has crunched on a tangentially related AAA game (that I cannot name) that was delayed twice (the first time for about 8 months, second for another few weeks) I do not think of crunch as something that always has to be a bad thing if it is well managed. The problem is that keeping crunch well managed is notoriously difficult, and there tends to be at least a couple (if not many) inexperienced managers in the chain that really hurt their teams.
In my case, initial "crunch" for my team (QA) on the project was nothing crazy: the managers and leads had to readjust their schedules to cover a newly formed night team, and we moved to a night and day team. This eventually moved to a night, day and skeleton hour team (i.e. almost 24/7 coverage) and even that was mostly fine, since people were not asked to work more than 40 hours a week (aside from some managers who felt obligated to do so, but that's a management style I'll never understand).
Everything seemed fine until about 6 months prior to release, where members of the team started burning out (burn out on a project is normal in QA, it is extremely difficult to play a game you might not like 40 hours a week for extended periods of time, nevermind the fact that some people had been on the project for YEARS at that point) and shrinking because my company had signed a bunch more contracts meaning other projects needed more people.
From that point forward, we were never told we HAD to do overtime, but there was an unsaid expectation both from management (for performance review reasons) and teammates (so they werent stuck doing all the OT) to do at least a little bit of extended hours, and these extended hours initially started with either working an extra 2-3 hours by staying late and then as release drew closer things kept getting added on such as:
1) Saturdays would suddenly open up as a possible workday, starting with half days and eventually becoming full days. A few weeks after that, Sundays were added too.
2) The 2-3 hours once a week I mentioned earlier became 2-3 hours available every day.
At the peak of the overtime craze on our project, I worked 72 hours a week for about a month straight. While I definitely got paid extra and made good money, I was willing to work myself to the bone at the time because I was trying to forget a bad breakup and I also at the time knew it would further my career. It absolutely did too since doing all of that overtime also gave me a good reputation around the office and was worn as a badge of honor, as every time I interviewed for a position to move up at the company from that point forward, the 72 hours every week for a month became an easy answer to the question "Are you dedicated to your projects and willing to see them through?"
After working on and seeing multiple similar projects: "Crunch" can be well managed by adept and highly skilled managers with minimal impact to the team however a large amount of the time it initially starts off as something well planned but all of the wheels fall off the cart at some point.
There is a real human impact to crunch and societal and team pressure are very real things, especially when you are at the lower end of the totem pole and horror stories are spread around the office about people being put on-call (i.e. let go unless needed for emergency work) because they weren't "team players". I was able to leverage the fact that I did a crazy amount of crunch (plus other skills) into a lot of job mobility for myself, but once I got to manage my own teams I quickly learned that my bosses (back when I was low on the totem pole) were under pressure from their bosses to get certain people to crunch because the client (we were outsourced QA) wanted specific, skilled people on the project at all times and did not want to bring in people who did not know the project (since commonly someone new to the project was either brand new and had to be trained or was someone off another project that had to learn the rules and methods of ours).
Management only cares about getting the game out sooner so they can make more money.
As long as it's voluntary crunch it's not a big deal and they are paying overtime of course. I work construction in the US and happens to me a lot. Companies need us to work long hours and weekends sometimes. Sucks but my bank account loves it.
Why not just delay the game further though. Paying overtime for everyone is more expensive for the company and kills moral. The cynic in me think that even if they delayed till January or February 2021 that would just mean longer crunch.
Why not just delay the game further though. Paying overtime for everyone is more expensive for the company and kills moral. The cynic in me think that even if they delayed till January or February 2021 that would just mean longer crunch.
Everybody talks a good game until their feet are put to the fire. lolWhat a journey this was
CD Projekt Red Boss Again Promises That Cyberpunk Devs Won't Have To Crunch
Following an impressive showcase from Cyberpunk 2077 this week at E3 in Los Angeles, CD Projekt Red boss Marcin Iwiński joined Kotaku Splitscreen to talk about crunch, recent controversy over transgender issues, and whether GOG is in trouble.
Last edited:
Yeah, I have an office job in a very small company and I have never worked overtime or had to crunch.
"Voluntary" crunch is terrible, it sets a human pressure on everyone; it continues the vicious cycle.
And let's be honest, there is no such thing as "voluntary crunch", it's heavily set in 'how things works' in the administration's mind coming from the fear of unemployment and obedience to the authority, for example, in restaurant businesses where I work. People always pay with their health at the end.
And let's be honest, there is no such thing as "voluntary crunch", it's heavily set in 'how things works' in the administration's mind coming from the fear of unemployment and obedience to the authority, for example, in restaurant businesses where I work. People always pay with their health at the end.
Not really surprised, and they'll probably give the excuse that the devs are really passionate about what they're doing, and so they're OK with crunch.
Alpha means content complete, even if full of minor to severe bugs. That's what the period between post-alpha and gold is for. They just meant they hit Alpha. But don't see this as en excuse - bad planning by project managers is why it happens, as well as pressure to get it out sooner than later.
Oh no god forbid they spend a little more money instead of working their employees to the bone.
Overtime is far different than crunch so let's not conflate the fact that many jobs you will have to work some overtime. And this is not mean to belittle video games as medium, but the only time I could see crunch being something that was worth it was if it was to save lives. Like company racing to try and develop a cure for a deadly disease.
Also they were never going to miss the fiscal year and have already delayed 5 months. I'm guessing that the next gen versions are no where close to done and they are basically rushing to launch the game before next gen steals any of their glory.
Also they were never going to miss the fiscal year and have already delayed 5 months. I'm guessing that the next gen versions are no where close to done and they are basically rushing to launch the game before next gen steals any of their glory.
Delaying it half a year so that they can work extra long hours on top of that makes me wonder why they announced the release date in April to begin with.
They release a game every few years. I'm sure the Witcher 3 money is drying up fast. They have bills to pay, and investors to keep happy.