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Cyberpunk 2077 Dev Team Will Work Extra Long Hours After Latest Delay
- Thread starter Deleted member 59955
- Start date
Fucked if I know. But the title of the thread and the article comes off as something of a quote, and to me a mischaracterization of the statement they made. Their words were "some degree of crunch". But gamespot translated that into "extra long hours." And people coming in here are in turn reading that as "wow if even CDPR are talking about extra long hours, work in on CP77 must be some sort of forced march through an apocalyptic hellscape." The thread and article title are just giving incorrect impressions about what CDPR said. We can have the conversation without the distortion. These suspicions and concerns about how bad it may be are totally reasonable, but aren't directly supported by what CDPR's saying. I don't think. I don't know.
This is one of the problems with announcing game dates so far out from release.
CDPR do not need to subscribe to any hype/marketing cycle. They could just say "when it's ready" forever and then say "It;s gone gold!" and the same people would buy it.
At this point delaying from September to October would not hurt sales. Even November, with a new gen console launch, they'd still get the same sales. They are that big.
In fact, responding to crunch based concerns by announcing another month on top of this delay would actually be good marketing.
CDPR do not need to subscribe to any hype/marketing cycle. They could just say "when it's ready" forever and then say "It;s gone gold!" and the same people would buy it.
At this point delaying from September to October would not hurt sales. Even November, with a new gen console launch, they'd still get the same sales. They are that big.
In fact, responding to crunch based concerns by announcing another month on top of this delay would actually be good marketing.
They're not getting this game out for you, they're getting out for shareholders / investors.
This seems like erroneous thinking. The idea that a game can be big enough that it is completely unaffected by the realities of its own launch window doesn't sound right. Surely even RDR2 gained or lost sales on the basis of the financial, competitive, and seasonal realities of its launch date. And when a game is that big, there's just that much more money at stake.
Oh yeah, I'm sure Adam Kicinski was talking about something completely different when he mentioned crunch:
That's why it was surprising to see that it was coming out in 2020. Would have expected 2021 based on what they said. I guess this might be to beat the new console releases? They can then release a next gen version 1 or 2 years later
Fair. To me it comes off more as them trying to find a way to pad saying "yes" when asked about crunch on the spot, but I get what you're saying with regard the title/wording and people taking it as a quote.
I agree. It's probably worse than they state, and as things usually bear out, will likely be worse than even they presently expect. He has every reason to hedge his own remarks about it, and I don't take his words at face value. But I just feel like his words are his words. I appreciate you seeing where I'm coming from.
You took "extra long hours" to be his own words, and contextualized it as being extra long by CDPR standards. All I'm saying is that you've been somewhat misled or have misunderstood what CDPR themselves have said about this crunch.
There have always been rumours about CD Projekt Red having pretty long hours, and them crunching hard for months on end to finish Witcher 3, so I was referring to their reputation, more than the wording of the title.
I would also restate again, that I wish countries in the EU at least would push back against this kind of worker abuse, which crunch absolutely is in my mind.
To me whats even worse with this happening these days is that its not even like when a game goes gold , that's it, the project is done.
Once they finish the project it'll be straight on to patches, post release support, dlc etc so even after crunching and rushing to make this new release date, there isn't even a real break seemingly to look forward to at the end
Once they finish the project it'll be straight on to patches, post release support, dlc etc so even after crunching and rushing to make this new release date, there isn't even a real break seemingly to look forward to at the end
Once game is done I can see them starting to cycle people in and out of time off from work. Doesn't many studios do that after they wrap up production and enter post-release phase?
I'd honestly rather see the whole thing delayed to 2021.
Not being super hyped for it is definitely coloring my opinion, but I'd like to think I'd say the same for any game. Plenty of other stuff to play in the meantime.
Not being super hyped for it is definitely coloring my opinion, but I'd like to think I'd say the same for any game. Plenty of other stuff to play in the meantime.
Nah, we're too busy aping the US and hollowing out our social security systems and workers rights.
Crunch is bad, and sadly still a reality in 99% of AAA development, it seems. CDPR is being more candid about it than most other studios, though, which seems like some kind of progress, however incremental? idk. all we can really do is take them at their word when they say they try to minimize it. Or not. I wouldn't mind if it got delayed more, personally, but at some point publishers and financial timelines probably dictate that it needs to release before point X.
The old way used to be after crunching for months, a large bunch got laid off. Losing your job wasn't better. In saying that, even with DLC and patches, there's no reason they can't plan around them so those periods aren't crunch. They just released the full game, at that point in the project there's no excuse to not be able to mostly accurately predict how long something takes. If they are still crunching at that point either they had a massive giant unforeseen problem or they built the crunch into the planning stage.
It's not progress, CDPR just knows they can get away with it and genuinely don't think they're doing anything wrong.
Oh yeah, don't get me wrong I am in no way saying the old way was good. Just to my naive outsider point of view I could see that being something to look forward to at the end of a project
People are very rarely brute forced to crunch. But you'll crunch anyway, because even if you technically can refuse to, you'll be seen as someone who "isn't a team player" if you do. Also there's peer pressure, are you really gonna go home at 5 when your friends and coworkers are crunching until midnight and you know they need you?
It's a terrible thing. And the management can often say "we didn't force anyone, it's voluntary". Yeah, right.
This. They are also known as a crunch studio so it's not just "normal" (shouldn't be normal but there does seem to be some studios trying not to have it) crunch for AAA, it's expected, harder and longer than other studios, so it's not right that 99.9% of AAA studios are doing it because one, we know from devs in the industry that the big publishers like EA and Ubisoft have been trying to reduce and two, CDPR have even worse crunch then their peers. It's not just one of those things that's standard for their industry, CDPR's way of doing it is not the standard
Yes. I'm a programmer, but I make commercial software not games.
The only times I've ever really stayed late / worked weekends is when I feel guilty for browsing the web too much.
No money is worth bad crunch. If they lose 15% of their overall sales (which they won't) then suck it up.
and in the end everyone will play the game, even jim who needs click to make money
"Crunch" is not just limited to the gaming industry. I work in the farming industry and there's extremely busy periods (60-70 hour weeks) during the year followed by not so busy periods. It's just the nature of the business. Things need doing at certain times and that's just the way it is and working long hours is just a part of life. So long as the employees are compensated for the extra effort either through time off in lieu after the crunch period has ended or remuneration I don't really see an issue.
You shouldn't crunch in the first place, but why are you rushing to make sure your game doesn't launch alongside new hardware?
A big part of responsibility for this lays on the shoulders of those managers who planned and set the original release date, because now it is seen as falling behind schedule and thus we have crunch. Release dates should not be made public almost a whole year ahead in complex projects like this and allowances for shifts in time-frames have to considered. Instead, the people responsible jumped the gun, potentially planning some PR-cycle that they had produced, and now the common Joe dev will have to pay for all of that. That is super not cool.
I have never had overtime in in my (so far) 8 year long working life. Dunno how to translate my jobs properly into english though lol
I learned "Gießereimechaniker". And after that worked in a "Spinnerei" taking care of the machines running.
It's been said multiple times but, that's not how it works.
First of all, publicly released date and internal dates can and often will be different. Internally everyone knew the game wasn't going to be shipped before late 2020/early 2021. It just make sense for marketing to still push for an early release date for several reasons.
However this delay won't cause "crunch" because they were already crunching to begin with.
Crunch is systemic in the gaming industry and planned by management as part of the development cycle.
This is what most ppl are missing. In most companies, crunch these days it's not a consequence of mismanagement, but it's a core part of the development cycle planned in advance by management. This is how broken this industry is (and has been since its inception really).
I work in the game industry and have never done crunch in my life. But I'm a bit of a unicorn. Plenty of friends are not as lucky as I am.
I remember how a few people here on Era were discussing crunch and games being delayed a lot this gen, when I said "a delayed game means longer dev time, and dev executives will make their employees work harder and longer", they used to say "they're delaying the game precisely to avoid crunch". I'm curious about what they'd have to say now.
Same probably goes for other games, I'm sure Doom Eternal, FF VII Remake and other devs will have to work their arses off to meet the delayed release date.
It's disgusting, but not surprising.
Same probably goes for other games, I'm sure Doom Eternal, FF VII Remake and other devs will have to work their arses off to meet the delayed release date.
It's disgusting, but not surprising.
Reading about crunches in the game industry it is often said that it's a studio culture thing, some don't do it but some do.
Or really think about financial constraints of it, studio like CDP burns cash like it's forever 420.
But then you don't need to crunch when you are unemployed when company goes under (CDP most likely bit too wealthy to die even if 77 is delayed total of an year).
Crunch is always bad, but sometimes is not as bad as people paint them.
I work for over 12 hours during the final months of the projects I manage. I get paid for those extra hours and the company I work for usually gets happy for it. Them life goes back to normal.
Life's not easy. But could be a lot worse.
I work for over 12 hours during the final months of the projects I manage. I get paid for those extra hours and the company I work for usually gets happy for it. Them life goes back to normal.
Life's not easy. But could be a lot worse.