Concerns over extended crunch for developers working on CD Projekt Red’s freshly delayed Cyberpunk 2077 were raised during a recent investor call, but joint CEO Adam KiciÅ„ski says that crunch on the project “never was” quite as bad as its been made out to be in media reports (that include leaked CDPR emails mandating 6 day workweeks.)
“Regarding crunch; actually, it’s not that bad –and never was,” remarks KiciÅ„ski. “Of course it’s a story that has been picked up by the media, and some people have been crunching heavily, but a large part of the team is not crunching at all since they have finished their work.”
KiciÅ„ski goes on to say that crunch is, at this stage, “mostly” confined to QA, engineers and programmers as most other disciplines have finished their work, but that even in these departments “it’s not that heavy.”
The bulk of the call sees KiciÅ„ski fielding questions from investors concerned about the delay’s impact on Cyberpunk 2077’s selling potential during the current fiscal year, as well as worries that bad PR from the delay will impact preorders or sales.
On all of these fronts, the CD Projekt Red leadership team maintains that everything will be fine despite the game’s 21 day delay. Specifically in regards to crunch, KiciÅ„ski says that developers are grateful for the additional 3 weeks of time to get the game running as intended even if that’ll mean an extension of crunch on a game last year talked up its commitment to avoid mandated overtime (via Kotaku).
“A large part of the team is not crunching at all since they have finished their work; it’s mostly about QA and engineers, programmers –but it’s not that heavy,” concludes KiciÅ„ski. “Of course, it will be extended a bit, but we have feedback from the team; they’re happy about the extra three weeks, so we don’t see any threats regarding crunch.”