News Cyberpunk 2077 has been delayed until September

The crunch debate is an interesting one. Hardly anybody in the press seemed to be against it in their own business or with any project ever until it was hyped a while ago in gaming dev projects. It is bad, yes. It is necessary in most projects, though. l

 

I can wait.
I have no doubt whatsoever that the level of preorders will be massive for this game and I wouldn’t want to risk a mediocre experience on what could be the number 1 game of the whole year.

 

The complaint about the games industry is not so much a 'crunch' in the final week or maybe month of the project. The complaint is that it became the expected level of work for the entirety of the project.

 

From what I've read it's mainly about crunch getting longer, i.e. 2-3 months instead of the usual 2-3 weeks. That is a logical development, though, given how much bigger and more complex game development has become over the years.

I don't think it's good or healthy, but it's not surprising.

 

How many hours do people work at CD Project Red, before and now during crunch time? Overtime is - to some degree - a necessary evil in many jobs. 100 hour weeks are insane and totally unhealthy, obviously. But CD Project Red is a Polish studio, so you probably cannot compare the working conditions to many Amercian studios, especially Rockstar.

I just googled Polish working laws: Apparently normal working time may not exceed 8 hours in a 24-hour period and an average of 40 hours in an average five-day working week. Overtime is limited at 48 hours a week. That's bad, but 100 hour weeks are on a whole different level.

I am not sure how to feel about overtime in this instance. On one hand it's "only" entertainment. On the other hand we are talking about an incredibly expensive project. Also we don't know the actual working hours.

 

And that there is usually no extra reward for putting up with the suffering compared to just doing a regular 40 hour job.

Most people working on such a project won't be required once the project is complete, so their temp contracts won't be renewed and they'll have to start from scratch at the bottom of the company for the next project (resulting in a nasty cycle where they can never get pay rises, promotions, pension plans etc).

 

When I worked 60+ hours a week for several months (not crunch or development, just generally too much to do) I got.... nothing. It was still a great experience and I learned a lot. "I'll never do that again" I decided back then and while that has limited my career options I'm fine. Sure, for devs that might be different but as @Aterius Gmork said we simply know too little.