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Cyberpunk 2077 Has Involved Months of Crunch, Despite Past Promises (polygon.com) 112

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most highly anticipated video games of the past decade, has already been delayed three times. Employees at CD Projekt Red, the Polish studio behind the game, have reportedly been required to work long hours, including six-day weeks, for more than a year. The practice is called "crunch" in the video game industry, and it is sadly all too common. From a report: It's also something that the leadership at CD Projekt Red said wasn't going to happen to the people making Cyberpunk 2077. Video game developers rarely speak openly with the press about their labor practices, but that's just what CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwinski did in May 2019. In a conversation with Kotaku, he said that his company thought of itself as more humane than its competitors. While long hours would be permitted for those interested in working them, crunch would not be made "mandatory." He called it a "non-obligatory crunch policy" and said it was something to be proud of.

[...] Shortly thereafter, signs began to emerge that the Cyberpunk 2077 project was in trouble. In January 2020, CD Projekt announced the game's first delay. The release date was moved from April to September. The multiplayer component was also pushed into at least 2022. "We need more time to finish playtesting, fixing and polishing," said IwiÅski and head of studio Adam Badowski. That same day, during a public call with investors, CD Projekt revealed that crunch would ultimately be needed to get the game done on time. It would also be mandatory for at least some employees. "Is the development team required to put in crunch hours?" asked an investor, to which CD Projekt CEO Adam Kicinski answered, "To some degree, yes, to be honest." [...] In September, Bloomberg reiterated what CD Projekt's leaders said to investors months before. A leaked email mandated six-day work weeks. Crunch had become a requirement, and according to anonymous employees, some developers had been working nights and weekends "for more than a year." In other words, delays do not mean relief for workers. Oftentimes, it simply means working at the same exhausting pace for additional weeks or months.
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Cyberpunk 2077 Has Involved Months of Crunch, Despite Past Promises More

Cyberpunk 2077 Has Involved Months of Crunch, Despite Past Promises

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  • Impossible (Score:4, Informative)

    by OMBad ( 6965950 ) on Monday December 07, 2020 @10:18AM (#60802556)
    This sort of corporate serfdom only happens in the US, not Europe. In Europe everything is a paradise and everyone is shiny and happy.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 )

      Poland is politically very different from most of western Europe, they have shitty toxic politics similar to the US driven by a large population segment of religious nuts and are currently under a right-wing authoritarian government. And now that you know your first thing about Poland's politics, it all makes a lot more sense doesn't it?

    • Re:Impossible (Score:4, Insightful)

      by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Monday December 07, 2020 @12:17PM (#60803066)
      Yes, but Poland is the US of Europe.
    • Europe does have pretty good labor laws but I guess compliace of them is not perfect (This probably happens in most places in the world).
      Anyway, crunch seems to be a pretty extended problem in games development around the world. So I'm not surprised in the slightest. Even less if you take into account how incredible complex AAA games have gotten.

    • This sort of corporate serfdom only happens in the US, not Europe. In Europe everything is a paradise and everyone is shiny and happy.

      You think Europe is some kind of single universal socialist marvel? Is that what they teach you in the America these days? Yes there are absolutely many countries in Europe where that practice would result in actual fines being levied by the government.

      Mind you this is Poland we're talking about. A country that if it attempted to join the EU today would not meet the minimum legal requirements for rule of law, run by a wannabie dictator (who unlike Trump is actually doing a good job of becoming one). You're

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Haven't this seen much hate boner for Poland since 1939. Are you German perchance?

        • Nope. But if you think it's all been roses and happy dancing then you haven't been paying attention to the EU at all. You realise that the EU is trying to pass a resolution to change the way its voting works specifically because they are sick of Poland's shit right? Western Europe is basically united in adding all sorts of language to EU resolutions targetting Poland specifically and the only country remotely on Poland's side right now is Hungary who themselves seem to be jealous of their turn towards a dic

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            >You realise that the EU is trying to pass a resolution to change the way its voting works specifically because they are sick of Poland's shit right?

            No, as a citizen living in a Nordic country that is one of many trying to stop that particular motion pushed by Big Two, it's pushed because us small nations tend to go against Franco-German alliance finalizing their takeover of EU and simply dictating to everyone else what EU does. They already amputated empowered Commissioners from every nations, they alre

            • LOL, "Franco-German alliance" otherwise known as most of Europe except Poland and Hungary.

              A democratic system designed to be ruled by tyranny of the minority cannot function. Single nation veto is what will ultimately bring down the EU, especially when that single nation no longer meets the requirements for membership but is able to veto resolutions against them and the system lacks a means of both punishment or kicking the drunk guest out of the house.

              And no my hate is real normal hate. My boner is due to

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                No, Franco-German alliance known as France and Germany. We rail against it in small countries. When a year ago they dropped the pretence and openly convened a bilateral meeting to agree on what will be on Council agenda, and then simply came to the rest of the nations of EU and informed us what will be on the table, it was a scandal. But EU is ultimately a duopoly in terms of realpolitik. What Germans and French agree on, rest of us have to suffer. No matter how painful. But then, you're willing to say that

  • EU work place rules make "mandatory." an NO NO!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nagora ( 177841 )

      EU work place rules make "mandatory." an NO NO!

      Who's going to enforce the rules?

      • EU work place rules make "mandatory." an NO NO!

        Who's going to enforce the rules?

        That's regulated at the state level, but if all else fails the EU Court. OP isn't exactly right as overtime is allowed, but you can find the minimal EU required working hours regulation at https://europa.eu/youreurope/b... [europa.eu] For Poland site links to the Ministry of Family and Social Policy https://www.gov.pl/web/rodzina [www.gov.pl]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nagora ( 177841 )

          EU work place rules make "mandatory." an NO NO!

          Who's going to enforce the rules?

          That's regulated at the state level, but if all else fails the EU Court.

          What I really meant was: who has to raise a complaint? Workers never want to do this as they feel that it's career-suicide in such an over-supplied industry, so is there an inspectorate that does checks?

          • That's regulated at the country level. I don't know about Poland but where I live (EU country) an article like this would lead the work environment authority to start an inspection (we also have a system of union appointed safety officers that can act given that there is at least one union member in the workplace).

    • There is Mandatory, then there is a "suggestion" or "request".

      Those promotions or bonus may have be given preference to "Team Players" or left aside for those to who are "Just sliding by"

      There are also cases where employees might have done something which they could be fired or punished for, but the company may let it slide, as long as they follow their request to work a few more hours.

      They're ways around laws. And employees can be manipulated, and officials can look the other way (A rare EU gaming compan

  • You Can Preload now on GOG! About F***ing time

  • Its not just them (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Monday December 07, 2020 @10:29AM (#60802602)

    A long time I interviewed for a developer job at EA.
    I knew it was a bad idea as soon as I was shown around. Many developers had sleeping bags and cots in their cubes, one interviewer said he had a new baby that he hadn't seen for a month, and I was told they were only hiring people that were single.

    • And this was probably around the same time that EA was putting out media showing their developers having NERF fights in the office and talking about how they spend time test-driving supercars for the NFS games. I wonder if those were actually developers at all or just actors.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        And this was probably around the same time that EA was putting out media showing their developers having NERF fights in the office and talking about how they spend time test-driving supercars for the NFS games. I wonder if those were actually developers at all or just actors.

        Depends which department you work.

        If you're in QA, you're doing 60 hours on a salary on a bug quota and spend hours walking along walls looking for bugs.

        If you're in the programmers pen, you're doing the grunt work and coding up a storm

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      It's not just video game industry.

  • Why do people become game developers? You do shit hours, you get shit pay, and it's much easier to just do JS shit. Why do they submit to this???

    • probably because they dream of working on stuff they liked as kids.

      What I'm most interested is why do companies do this? a crunch now and then can help, but a continuous practice, where your employees work very long hours for weeks or months is counter productive, people get tired, produce less, make more mistakes and cause re-work, it is very possible that the delays may even be caused by problems introduced during crunches and that may take a long time to find. Just stop being cheap and hire more people

      • Companies do this because they can get away with it. Game companies have generally high turnover, and they get fresh impressionable blood frequently. They just need relatively few people to be ok with working long hours for the long term and be burnout-resistant, and those go into senior positions eventually.

        The clients are also a special case, as when you're targetting a young age group, that group has no idea of your long history of offenses (see EA, etc), and doesn't really care all that much, as they're

        • I agree with everything except the clients not knowing what goes on. I mean, that may be true but it's not exclusive of the games industry or young customers. Do you know any group of people who consistently tracks how well companies treat employees and then proceed to boycott them accordingly?
          I think most people just don't care or can't keep track even if they do

          • You don't need to keep track, it just appears in your social/news circles somehow. At least that's what happens with me, I'm not on the lookout for publisher abuses, but I get a bit from Slashdot, a bit from Reddit, once upon a time the Rockstar wives incident made the news, etc. Over the years, you just gather more and more info. I agree with you that a lot of people, even if they do have the info, and are adults and all, they just simply don't care. I've worked in the industry in the past, so I do care a

      • What I'm most interested is why do companies do this?

        Gaming is a rather risky industry to be in, so companies are cutting corners where they can minimize their losses. That's why the companies that make good games are bad to work for, and the companies that make bad games (as in monetariliy exploitative) are good to work for.

        AAA tech stacks are rather unique as well, so it's not easy to just dump more people on a project.

    • You grow up loving these games, and so you go to school to learn how to make them. You aren't a hobby dev, though, so you aren't plugged in enough to hear the talk about how bad these companies are.

      They just don't realize what they're getting in to. Which is sad because the eventual burnout probably results in years of mental problems.

      • This. I nope'd the hell out of the idea of being a game developer when I saw what the industry was likes. It's the coal mines of programming work. I have an uncle who started as a game developer back when it was actually a good job but stayed in the industry as it became hellish, he's burned out pretty badly and lives as a wandering hippie now.

    • MOST young college grads with CS degrees want to code games. That's their career goal. So, the labor supply is very high and the labor market is competitive.

      Furthermore, just coming out of college, they don't often have a very clear idea of what their market worth is. Many of them are intimidated by the sense that the market is already teeming with more experienced developers, and they feel like they must accept low pay and long hours in order to compete in the labor market. And many of them don't actua

    • Many of us still have our 12 year old self in the back of our head, that you feel that you want to impress.
      What do you want to tell your 12 year old self, that you making video games, or making a system to process financial information faster across insurance companies.

      You adult brain will say Video Game isn't worth the effort, as you get paid more doing the latter, plus you have more free time for you other hobbies and family. But your 12 year old brain, will be disappointed that you are doing boring stuff

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Monday December 07, 2020 @01:10PM (#60803356)

      As a long-time professional game developer, I guess I can answer that. People want to make games because, as far as jobs go, it's pretty damned fun and fulfilling. If you're a gamer, it's highly satisfying to see a fun game come to life that you had a hand in creating.

      You earn less than other equivalent programmers, and yes, sometimes you crunch at the end of a project. But keep in mind you only tend to hear the horror stories. It's not really as bad in aggregate as you might think. I've been a game developer for well over two decades now, and I've actually rarely had to crunch like this (and certainly never this long), because I made it a priority to find employers who respected my work/life balance. And while my salary isn't has high as I might have gotten outside the game industry, I still earn a very comfortable living - far more than my expenses require.

      The work we do is very challenging. Often, we're asked to attempt things that no one has attempted before, and we have fairly severe real-time constraints in which to do it. It keeps the job exciting and interesting. It's not a place to work if you want to just coast.

      Maybe it's hard to explain to outsiders. No job is perfect, and game developer has its downside. But it's hard for me to imagine doing anything else.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Same reason people become and remain police officers keep the dregs of society from hurting most of it in spite of shit hours, shit pay and they could have a much easier job in private security. It's a calling rather than just a job.

  • What is it about game development that makes overruns so common? I get that employee exploitation is rife because a lot of people want to be in the biz. But the software itself has all the same major features in most every game - graphics, physics, networking code are all mostly the same each time, so they are provided by a game engine (aren't they?)

    I'm not denying the reality that game development is still a labor-intensive and unpredictable effort, I'm just asking why that's still the case.

    • Re:Why does this always happen? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Monday December 07, 2020 @10:57AM (#60802690)

      I think the major reason is that they set hard release dates. If you're doing many other kinds of software development that don't sell at retail then it's much easier to adjust guidelines as you go. But with video games it's often very important that they meet certain deadlines often to align their game with new console releases or Christmas.

      And the customers often aren't very understanding when games get released late. Just look at all the people complaining that Cyberpunk isn't out yet. Sure there are some people who are understanding. But there's also a lot of customers who are making a big deal over not being able to get the new game even though they probably have a steam library with 30 games they never even started.

      • I think the major reason is that they set hard release dates. If you're doing many other kinds of software development that don't sell at retail then it's much easier to adjust guidelines as you go. But with video games it's often very important that they meet certain deadlines often to align their game with new console releases or Christmas.

        And the customers often aren't very understanding when games get released late. Just look at all the people complaining that Cyberpunk isn't out yet. Sure there are some people who are understanding. But there's also a lot of customers who are making a big deal over not being able to get the new game even though they probably have a steam library with 30 games they never even started.

        Makes sense, but other industries also have hard release dates and learned to deal with it. Big budget movies release dates are scheduled with years in advance. Toys are subject to the same Christmas season that affect video games.

        So why the video game industry, which is more than 40 years old, never learned how to plan and deal with this issue?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by flink ( 18449 )

          Makes sense, but other industries also have hard release dates and learned to deal with it. Big budget movies release dates are scheduled with years in advance. Toys are subject to the same Christmas season that affect video games.

          Movie production is mostly unionized, so for the most part there are established rules about how long you can force people to work. The one area of movie production that isn't unionized: special effects houses, is, surprise, surprise, rife with crunch.

          For mas market consumer goods like toys, well I'm not 100% sure. I do know that the pipeline for these things is months long to get production lines and shipping space reserved. So I imagine that for most of the development time it's a small creative team d

        • (Not really a video game player anymore...)

          Maybe because the industry is always worried about using the latest generation of gaming engines?
          You miss the window and have to refactor your game for all sorts of differences in the newer engine.

          • (Not really a video game player anymore...)

            Maybe because the industry is always worried about using the latest generation of gaming engines?
            You miss the window and have to refactor your game for all sorts of differences in the newer engine.

            I think you're probably right, no one wants to work on a new Duke Nukem Forever.

        • Game programming in 1980 was one dude writing CLI text adventures. Cyberpunk 2077 is on a whole different level, utilizing stuff like ray tracing that was just a tech demo until this year. The technology is a little less mature, and requires a bit rarer skills to develop than, say, stitching up or injection-molding some plastic toys. As for movies, plenty of those have production delays, or don't come out at all.
          You could, theoretically, just add more people to meet the deadlines (assuming you can find enou

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by chill ( 34294 )

        So... stop announcing titles so far in advance? The industry has decades of experience in knowing just how long these things take to develop. The problem is, they also have decades of experinece in how hard they can push their employees.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Zumbs ( 1241138 )
        You can't move Christmas, but you can adjust your scope.

      • I think the major reason is that they set hard release dates. If you're doing many other kinds of software development that don't sell at retail then it's much easier to adjust guidelines as you go. But with video games it's often very important that they meet certain deadlines often to align their game with new console releases or Christmas.

        There aren't that many software developers in other industries doing big releases anymore: multiple smaller releases are preferred, both because it is easier to manage and because it gets changes in the hands of users sooner. Even in the games industry, for games that don't rely heavily on story, many indie developers opt for incremental releases.

        Big releases (waterfall style) had frequent and large overruns outside the games industry as well. Some of that can probably be ascribed to incompetence, but softw

      • 30 is an understatement! Steam sales were the worst when I was regularly overoptimistic about having time to play games. I plan on using my holiday break this year to actually get through a backlog so I might be closer to 30.

      • There's also an internal dynamic that's at play as well. People who work on games are very, very reluctant to cut their favorite features, often because they've made a big emotional investment in getting that feature in to begin with. Or, the scope of the game has been designed so that cutting such a feature simply isn't an option - or at least, not a good one. Building the game assets is a *very* long, hugely work-intensive process. You can change the game design on a whim, but you have to make the gam

    • ...graphics, physics, networking code are all mostly the same each time, so they are provided by a game engine (aren't they?)...

      Any game worth playing will build tons of stuff on top of whatever the engine provides. That said, there are tons of low-quality games that are little more than asset flips written in a few days that fill up Steam.

      Triple A developers (like CD Projekt Red) often build their own game engines, which in some ways can make it even harder to build the game as now your engine itself is sometimes a moving target.

      Personally, I think this issue (crunch times) is an issue of supply. There is a huge supply of both qua

    • In the past it was more due to the distribution chain. CD stamping, box printing, packing, shipping to stores, marketing, etc. -- all things that can't realistically be pulled off when you have a super variable date.

      These days they probably want to take advantage of christmas shopping. Especially with COVID where people are on average playing more games.

    • What is it about game development that makes overruns so common?

      Scope creep probably accounts for 90%.

      • It's also probably harder to cut features.

        With a piece of office software pushing a feature to a future release can be disappointing, but with a game it can seriously degrade the quality of the game.

        Since the features are often the mechanics of the game, the whole thing can fall apart if a feature is removed, or doesn't play right. It forces every (or many anyway) of the features to have that last 10% that takes 90% of the time implemented, rather than being written off.

        Also, not only is there getting the m

    • Video game design is public facing. it attracts a bunch of incompetents and lazy people.

      OS development etc. is done by uber nerds and managed by professionals who understand software development.

      Game development is done by people with active twitter accounts now, at least that is the least controversial way to say it.

      And all software development is hard. Extremely hard. If you are running a lumber mill, say you have 1 lumberjack and output 10 logs per day. You hire a second and you can now output 20 logs. N

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Passion profession. People who go into it are overwhelmingly passionate about making games.

      That means they care a lot less about salaries, work hours and so on. It's a question of priorities. If there's something in your life that you really, REALLY want to do more so than anything, would you really care about how much you are paid for it?

      Personally, I subscribe to formulation that "job is something that you have to be paid for, because you wouldn't do it for free". And that makes professions that have a la

  • Crunch for 1 Year?!? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BBF_BBF ( 812493 ) on Monday December 07, 2020 @11:04AM (#60802722)
    Then it's definitely a project management failure.

    CD Projekt is no longer a small inexperienced company when it comes to developing games, so they should have known better.

    • PM is at least part of the problem.
      I'm just finishing study of both the Project Management and Technical Management disciplines. From OP/TFA it's clear both baselines, Program Execution and Technical Requirements were significantly underestimated.
      This inevitably leads to schedule slip, if not outright project failure. Labor hours are increased while labor costs stay flat or are decreased. "Crunch" yields both because the labor is salaried, and total cost of labor within the project decreases inversely with

    • I think you've got a causal problem there. CD Projekt Red is no longer a small inexperienced company so they do know enough to know that screwing employees is the industry norm.

      But they're no Gearbox Software. They are still paying employees with money rather than promises of bonuses that don't materialise. CD Projekt Red has a long way to go yet.

  • Playing video games or making them?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BBF_BBF ( 812493 )

      Playing video games or making them?

      You do realize that the people involved with creating a game get paid, right? Maybe not what they should for hours worked, but they definitely get paid.
      Also, the top Twitch streamers get paid more than you'll ever make to "play games". ;-)

    • Answer: C - shitposting on Slashdot out of a need to feel superior to other random people on the Internet.

  • This is media noise (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cederic ( 9623 ) on Monday December 07, 2020 @11:38AM (#60802862) Journal

    The games media have been trying for months to knife CD Projekt Red and push a 'crunch' story.

    The reality is very different.

    I'm sure that there has been some crunch, and that some people have done six day weeks. I refuse to believe the whole team's been doing that for a year.

    It's a media fabrication to push an agenda.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You think? I've worked for startups where 60hr weeks are the MINIMUM. I'd work, eat, work, eat, work, sleep, then repeat. EVERY day, not just 6 days a week.
    • I've heard of the game before, but I don't follow the game press at all these days due to lack of time, but why are they supposedly trying to knife the developer in the back? Their previous games have gotten a lot of praise so it seems weird to change that for no apparent reason. I think that requires some explanation to be believed or not disregard as conspiracy drivel, particularly when the games media is more often historically criticized for being shills for the major studios and giving good reviews for

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        If I had to guess I'd say it's an attempt to push a games industry unionisation agenda.

        There's also been the fake outrage that the game had a poster on a wall in a trailer of in-game footage advertising someone that had a genital implant. Apparently this is offensive to trans people (when I would have thought they were the ideal audience).

        On top of that the company is Eastern European and doesn't get on its knees to support the cause du jour. Games journalists are known to gang together to attack anybody th

      • Why are the "gaming-media" trying to knife the developers in the back? Because Cyberpunk 2077 is going to appeal to the average male gamer with themes that are rather non-woke, and woke, and everything mixed together.

        And that is what they hate, any kind of commentary that might showcase them as being part of a dystopian future triggers them, and they know the average person will see them for what they are, so they need to attack and censor.

    • Do you have evidence to this effect, or is it just weird conspiracy theory? Because I've worked in the games industry and a year of crunch time sounds perfectly plausible to me. (You'll notice that I said "worked", past tense.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        Well, given they didn't even go to 6 day weeks until October..
        https://www.forbes.com/sites/e... [forbes.com]

        I don't agree with 6 day working weeks. I don't agree with 100 hour weeks. (I do typically work 55 hour weeks across 5 days though.)

        I do however recognise that in the final 8 weeks of a project that started in around 2011 there may well be a desire to get the damn thing finished, and wouldn't criticise the teams for wanting to complete the game, or the management for wanting to hit the release date which will have

    • I refuse to believe the whole team's been doing that for a year.

      Yeah cool. We'll take your belief over anything else. I mean it's not like the deadline hasn't slipped multiple times, and that crunch time is the norm of the industry. Nope it's all vanilla scented candles and roses at CD Projekt Red because Cederic *believes*.

      Are you the messiah?

  • Why even bother releasing the game? This isn't the days of LAN parties and PIA multiplayer over IPX. These days online play out of the box is expected.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BBF_BBF ( 812493 )
      Tell that to rockstar games, they still release online play modes after the release of the single player game.

    • Some of us aren't fast-twitch aspiring esports players that only care about "owning" other randoms on the Internet, but actually care about single-player immersive experiences and story and such.

      I know, hard to believe that a company that is creating a AAA title based on a tabletop RPG would care about story and immersive experience.

      Go play the latest retread of Call of Duty and let the adults have something nice too.

      • Unfortunately immersive sims - my favourite kind of game - are very rare because they are expensive to develop and don't sell well. The last one released so far - Prey - is from 2017.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Expected on a title like this? Hardly.

      For starters I think you believe the number of people who play games multiplayer is far higher than it is. From what I've seen well over half of all gamers only play single player https://www.forbes.com/sites/a... [forbes.com]

      After that, games similar to cyberpunk typically don't come with multiplayer so the fact that they're adding it in at all is

  • Have they always been like this? The Witcher 3 is easily in the top 3 best RPGs ever made. It's why I have a Cyberpunk pre-order, which I rarely do, as most companies do not deserve that level of trust. I'd rather they take whatever time they need to make it a solid amazing game like TW3 is/was.

    I know the games industry sucks in general. I'm sad to hear that CDPR's management practices haven't been any different for this title at least.

    • I'm going to make a wild guess that at the problem is directly related to Witcher 3's success. The previous game was good, and the new one better live up to expectations. Bigger story, bigger environments, bigger everything. Being "merely" as good as Witcher 3 will be seen as a failure. So they made huge plans to ramp everything up to 11 and found out that scaling is a lot harder than they thought. It's a form of the second system effect [wikipedia.org].

  • Cruch is supposed to be the last one, at most two weeks, to adhere to arbitrary time limits the suits have mae up to look like they are in control amd have a clue.

    This is just criminal worker abuse.

  • Trying to think of any anecdotes from me or any friends in IT that do have a good ending! All of them start with promises that this project will be delivered differently and all end up in the same JFDI hell!
  • Just after the crunch is over, a bunch of stories roll around to shit on sales and put at risk any bonuses these people may be due. Anyway, crunch was to be expected of a game that was on its 3rd deadline.
  • I've worked in the video game industry for 15 years now and this type of article happens all the time. Some big name release gets pushed back, it leaks out that despite management attempts to curb crunch that it happens. The news gets out, some publication makes a big splash about it, it gets sensationalized. Next comes all the pearl clutching of people who work in software development about how they would NEVER work at a company that requires this, despite it being a very common thing all over the place.

  • The most amusing part is this:

    No matter how much crunch time any given developer puts in to get a title launched by the promised due date, it's still unfinished.

    For most games these days, it takes two or three patches post launch before the game is actually playable.

  • Polygon rehashed this from the last time it was reported then add assumptions so they can stick a new date on the article. It's not true news and mostly an opinion piece. There is no huge outcry from staff, polygon are just click baiting and spewing opinion pieces and this is not the kind of article we expect to see on slashdot. They have a personal vendetta and it's just terrible journalism.

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