We learned this week that Cyberpunk 2077 would see a significant delay. The announcement came directly from CD Projekt RED and it sees their upcoming FPS-RPG moving from an April release to September 2020. Unfortunately for the developers at CD Projekt RED this added development time doesn't mean less crunch as you may have expected.
Instead, the studio flat out admitted that this added development time will just increase the amount of crunch forced upon the developers. Now, instead of experiencing crunch up through the game's April release, these same developers will get to experience it up through September. This is an extra five months of crunch time for them. It's certainly one of those unfortunate damned if you do, damned if you don't situations.
CD Projekt RED CEO Adam Kiciński said that the team will be required to put in additional hours as the new release date approaches. This was said during a recent Q&A conference call (PDF transcript).
And is the development team required to put in crunch hours?
Adam Kiciński: To some degree, yes – to be honest. 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. Unfortunately.
Adam Kiciński: To some degree, yes – to be honest. 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. Unfortunately.
Well, so much for that.
PC Gamer also points out that CD Projekt RED's Glassdoor page "shows that things haven't improved much" since The Witcher 3's development. The negatives provided by alleged employees say that there is a poor work-life balance, poor pay, and incompetent management. Employees have said that there is "too much pressure and no life."
HOWEVER, we live in a world where for some reason there are enough driven and intelligent people that they do exist, the fact that The Witcher 3 is a thing that is real is insane, what's crazier is that they decided to do it all again.
I have no words of wisdom or ideas just heartfelt thoughts for the developers, and immense confusion that any of it exists at all.