CD Projekt Red Aims To Minimize Crunch Time For Cyberpunk 2077 Developers

Looking at the scale of AAA titles that are more than welcomed in today’s current market in the videogame industry, many aren’t familiar with how a game as big as these multi-million dollar titles are made to be. With hundreds of developers at work towards the same project, it is still a tedious process which results with more ill-gotten practices such as crunch to make up for time that could benefit the game’s development.

As we have already witness with successful titles such as Red Dead Redemption 2 and more recently with Epic Games’ Fortnite, it is something that despite the negative affect it puts on developers is present in many studios. But for developer CD Projekt Red, the Polish studio aims to set crunch time for upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 to a minimum for those working on the anticipated title.

This was revealed by studio Co-Founder Marcin Iwinski as he detailed the coming plans for the sci-fi, futuristic title. Sharing that he plans to introduce a “non-obligatory crunch policy,” which will limit the amount of time outside of the developer’s work schedule to focus on the game. Adding on that though the strategy is already in practice; Iwinski is set preparing to full enforce the policy as development on 2077 continues.

“I think this is the commitment we’re ready to make today, and we’ll be listening to people,” Iwinski shares. “We definitely open a lot of lines of dialogue here, and we’d like to start with that.”

For how this will work primarily: let’s say the employer asks a handful of developers to work outside past the set office hours or even on the weekend, the developers are obligated to decline without fear of losing their position since it won’t be mandatory to stay.

We have already witness similar practiced measures to go against crunch within developers such as with Respawn Entertainment. Previously revealing that the developer would have to give up work on the unannounced Titanfall project to prioritize Apex legends without the worry of pushing developers to crunch.

Are you happy with CD Projekt Red’s decision to try to eliminate crunch within the studio?

Source: Kotaku