Cyberpunk 2077 Devs Will Reportedly Be Required To Crunch Ahead Of Release

While I feel for the employees and their families I also have Cyberpunk 2077 already preordered for my also preordered XSX and I reeeeally would appreciate it if there wasn't another delay.

I would personally prefer yet another delay, but at least it's only 6 days a week as opposed to 7. Of course I have no idea how many hours per day it is. Hopefully the dev team is able to maintain something semblant of a work-life balance. I have crunched in college and it is not good for your ability to concentrate, which makes you make mistakes and take forever to debug what would be an easy fix if you hadn't stayed up the last 59 hours. The thought of months of crunch is bad.

Booo, crunch. This shouldn't be needed after the delays. Scope was perhaps too large. The classic Ubisoft problem.

Not happy to see that. I see why they can't delay, financially probably, but since the game wasn't even going to be next gen ready until 2021 anyway, maybe the Halo infinite route would have been the better way to go.

As someone who has worked in the industrial energy sector for my entire adult life, there are many people out there who call a six day work week normal rather than crunch. I assume, however, that the individual days will not be short, and that is unfortunate. At least things will go back to what they know as normal after release. That is, until the first DLC is looming.

Jim Serling video incoming.

No one should have to do this it should be an option if you want to undertake extra work hours/overtime.
Therefore delay the game if it is not going to be finished. It is releasing in a packed release window anyway.

Doesn't this happen at a lot of factories as we approach the holidays due to increased demand?

As a dev, I can say that a delay has nothing to do with trying to avoid crunch.

I’ve been working 70-80hours per week for over 2 years. Only now I am in a company where I can have a 40-50hour week instead.
The difference? Private vs public company.
My current company has no shareholders to report to. So we can take our time for development.

So long as EVERY single other executive and manager is also working that extra day over the weekend and not enjoying there free time, then it’s a bit better asking your employees to also do it. But something tells me that won’t be the case... just delay the game instead of forcing an extra 8 hours plus on your staff, it’s a game your not trying to save people’s lives. In fact making staff work an extra day can impact heavily their lives, but I guess developers are used to it?

While I don't encourage crunch as a standard answer, being agile is key in these cases, I can understand that the situation (all the corona struggles) is really calling for this last grab. I work in education, and teachers, as well as supporting staff are crunching all the time to keep the online media production as high quality as possible. I'm sure many professionals wrestle with situations like this but specific for their own working environment.

This is the normal crunch you get as people work harder just before a deadline. Having it for about a month at the end of a multi-year development cycle isn’t really a problem. The problem comes when a developer expects this rate of work the whole time rather than just before the deadline.

Is it true that the next gen update isn’t until 2021? If so I wouldn’t mind a delay and will wait for that update before playing. There’s a couple of other big open-world games like AC Valhalla and Watch Dogs Legion that are both Optimised for Series X on day one.

Aw I’d love a six day working week 🥰

They've been crunching for months already, stop giving CDPR a pass.

Waiting on the inevitable replies of "at least they do it better than others!!!"

@Enigk yep. People are ordering from Amazon all the time, do they forget that their staff are treated awful and work long, low paid shifts? No they’re not arsed as long as their game arrives from amazon the day after they order.

Yet when it comes to a dev having to put in a bit of extra work to get a game out, outrage.

@MaccaMUFC jan 21 I’ve heard. I’m holding off till it’s optimised for the X.

@Fenbops I'm not justifying it but at least with a game, as long as it gets good reviews, you can be proud. No one is proud because little Jonny got his Switch in time for Xmas, other than the parents, or you have helped produce enough food products in a month to feed a starving country for a decade.

@gollumb82 but would It hurt the game to have 3 additional months?

@StrikerXL
Probably not. I don't want to come off as an insensitive guy but this game has already been delayed 2 or 3 times.

It’s a shame for others that even a small less profitable studio like CD Projekt RED is going to sell “the most anticipated title of decade” Cyberpunk 2077 for not more than 60$ and they will provide the next-gen ground up remaster absolutely free for both hardware platforms. I’m ready to pay them even 100$ for such good pro-consumer work and supporting the small team.

Hopefully the game comes out good at launch, No need to rush this game..

To be clear I'm not buying this anytime soon anyways because I'll have soo many games to play on gamepass so the date doesn't effect me. Having said that i don't see the issue. People work OT...it's a common thing and the company is compensating the employees. They delayed the game 2-3 times already so yeah it's time to get er done. If they get out for the Christmas rush they will get more sales which will result in more bonus for the employees.

@graysoncharles i like what you did there

This is depressing news.

Ok six days a week, but how many hours a day? If they're working six 8 hour days that's nothing, loads of people work more than 48 hours a week every week. Now if they're doing 10+ hours a day that's really crappy

As we don’t know how many hours per day they are working, it’s hard to comment on whether this is serious or not. Plenty of people work overtime in this world. Some even love it because of the extra $.

With that being said, they should have just made the game next-gen only & release it when it is done. How many people are going to play this on Xbox One & PS4?

I mean, are we really surprised by crunch at this point?

@KelticDevil It is a recession, so probably quite a few. Marginal effort is probably all that is needed to ship last gen at this point.

I work in Healthcare recruitment for an agency. Unfortunately in the middle of a pandemic needless to say crunching is an understatement.

Its not nice to see but with tight deadlines its sadly inevitable.

Lets hope post release the staff get some much needed time off.

Proof that even the better ones fall for the trappings of the industry.

And "well compensated" isn't really good enough. Not everyone is motivated by money. Some people just want to be able to see their families without fear of losing a job or not being able to afford the mortgage/rent. Or just work in a job they enjoy without their passion being abused.

I've worked in a part time job in an industry I loved, and I've worked 40 hours weekly plus overtime in one I hated, and I was much happier in the former.

The sooner the industry outgrows the whole 'hype machine' marketing business model, the better. Because honestly, it's the only reason they feel like they need to work more to finish it for launch, rather than just launch it when it's finished.

Each team member putting in an extra day of work for the final six weeks will logically only be buying the studio six days shaved off of the date the game is ready to be released.

Is that worth the tradeoff of not only hemorrhaging money in overtime pay, but non-trivially lowering the quality of both their employees' work product and life balance for a month and a half? Not a question I could presume to answer, but as someone with no stakes in the matter, it looks like an exceptionally costly bargain for a pretty small reward.

@Fath
Those 6 days could be vital.
Avengers came out a bug ridden mess. Took a week before a patch got it anywhere near respectable.
That is what those 6 days could prevent from happening.

@Fath @blinx01 So then the question becomes "would a week delay negatively affect the product and revenue is a drastic way?".

The next gen version isn't releasing until next year already. The current gen version could have easily waited too. Even if it was just a few weeks.

Crunch is the norm on pretty much any project if you have been hitting delays. Doesn't matter the profession, if you have a deadline and can't meet it then you need the extra hours to wrap up. Its not fun but when you sign up for ANY project in ANY sector then expect this. I won't even go in discussing nurses, emergency services, teachers, and others that put a whole lot more than an extra 8-10 hours a week. So if you can't deal with crunch time, then go to something insignificant.

@MaccaMUFC I’m thinking the same thing. I’m happy to wait for the next-gen update. Plenty to play in the meantime.
I hope the game dev industry can find new methods that would not require them to crunch at the end. Perhaps wait to announce titles until they are a few months from release rather than years ahead? COVID has required Nintendo to use this strategy this year and it seems to be working fine for them.