5 Worst Development Crunch Stories in Gaming
4. Cyberpunk 2077
CD Projekt RED are one of the most renowned developers in the video game industry, but all of that nearly came tumbling down after the release of Cyberpunk 2077. CD Projekt RED made one fatal mistake when first announcing their exciting new game set to come out after the monumental release of The Witcher 3, and it’s one that developers and publishers consistently make: they announced it far too early.
Announced way back in 2012 with a teaser trailer released in 2013, the hype machine was in full effect, even though the game was nowhere near finished. Cyberpunk was initially slated to release on the 16th of April 2020, but it was then delayed to the 17th of September, then delayed for a third time to the 19th of November and for a fourth and final delay to the 10th of December 2020.
At the time of the delays, CD Projekt RED released a statement saying, “Night City is massive - full of stories, content and places to visit, but due to the sheer scale and complexity of it all, we need more time to finish playtesting, fixing and polishing.” A clear sign of things not going so great at CD Projekt (outside of the numerous delays) was that most of the development team found out about the third delay the same time as we all did. How’s that for good communication? Former Kotaku editor, Jason Schrier, reported that the lack of communication surrounding the delay was due to “lead up on the news on stock regulations”.
During the development of the game itself, many employees were reportedly told to work up to 6 days a week, which lasted for around a year. This comes after CD Projekt's co-founder, Marcin Iwiński, said in an interview with Kotaku way back in May 2019 that overtime and crunch periods would “not be mandatory” when the employees get asked to stay for longer. Of course, for anybody who’s worked for a boss, if they ask you to stay behind but it’s “not mandatory”, it basically kinda is.
Jumping to 2020, when the delays were coming hard and fast for Cyberpunk, during an investor call, the CEO of CD Projekt RED, Adam Kiciński, was asked if the development team were required to put in crunch hours, to which Adam replied with, “to some degree, yes, to be honest”. He continued by saying, “We try to limit crunch as much as possible, but it is the final stage. We try to be reasonable in this regard, but yes”.
In a leaked company email by anonymous employees, staff at CD Projekt RED were required to work 6 days a week, which included nights and weekends for a whole year on the run-up to the game’s release. This is a far cry from the CD Projekt of 2019, claiming that crunch periods wouldn’t be mandatory.
As much as CD Projekt RED claimed that the delays and crunch period were down to the COVID-19 pandemic and developers working from home, crunch is always the result of poor management and a disregard for the hard-working people who make games.