{"id":93710,"date":"2019-05-17T20:41:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-17T20:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/342916"},"modified":"2019-05-17T20:41:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T20:41:00","slug":"cd-projekt-red-talks-cyberpunk-2077-crunch-vows-to-be-more-humane-to-devs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/05\/17\/cd-projekt-red-talks-cyberpunk-2077-crunch-vows-to-be-more-humane-to-devs\/","title":{"rendered":"CD Projekt Red talks Cyberpunk 2077 crunch, vows to be ‘more humane’ to devs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI think this is the commitment we\u2019re ready to make today, and we\u2019ll be listening to people. We definitely open a lot of lines of dialogue here, and we\u2019d like to start with that.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

– CD Projekt Red leadership says speaking publicly about crunch acts as a public commitment to treat its devs humanely<\/em><\/p>\n

CD Projekt Red\u2019s co-founder Marcin Iwi\u0144ski and studio head Adam Badowski approached Kotaku<\/a> to discuss how the studio aims to tackle crunch as development of Cyberpunk 2077<\/em> enters its final laps.<\/p>\n

Crunch is a persistent topic of conversation in the game industry, but stories about the practice are typically born out of burnt-out developers coming forward as opposed to studio leadership reaching out to the press. Iwi\u0144ski, however, says the proactive approach aims to act as a public commitment that “we want to be more humane and treat people with respect.”<\/p>\n

On the topic of crunch, Iwi\u0144ski vows that the final stretch of Cyberpunk 2077<\/em>\u2019s development will \u201cbe better than The <\/em>Witcher<\/em>\u2019s finishing period,\u201d in the very least. He tells Kotaku that the studio is pushing its existing \u201cnon-obligatory crunch policy\u201d even harder this time around and ensuring developers know that crunch isn\u2019t mandatory, even when they\u2019re directly asked to work nights and weekends. (Though, as past stories on crunch<\/a> often point out, there are many ways crunch can become an implied requirement even without a direct mandate.)<\/p>\n

The full Kotaku article<\/a> has a detailed account on which promises CD Projekt Red would and wouldn\u2019t commit to during the conversation. For instance, Iwi\u0144ski wouldn\u2019t say much of the specifics of the crunch that has happened so far, or promise to limit crunch to set periods of time. Instead, he reiterates that opening up to the press aims to act as a public commitment to the team working on Cyberpunk 2077<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve created a lot of force functions for us to improve,\u201d Iwi\u0144ski told Kotaku. \u201cMaking this commitment, I hope it shows that we are treating this matter very seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kotaku\u2019s Jason Schreier points out that the proactive approach may aim to preempt a potential investigation similar to the one the site published<\/a> on BioWare\u2019s Anthem<\/em> in April. Schreier notes that four former CD Projekt Red devs reached out to Kotaku following that Anthem<\/em> story to say they\u2019d seen similar labor practices while working on Cyberpunk 2077<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI think this is the commitment we\u2019re ready to make today, and we\u2019ll be listening to people. We definitely open a lot of lines of dialogue here, and we\u2019d like to start with that.\u201d – CD Projekt Red leadership says speaking publicly about crunch acts as a public commitment to treat its devs humanely CD […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}