Internal strife and disorganization injured the “game of the generation”


Internal strife and disorganization injured the “game of the generation”

What gamers are talking about, boiled down, in 2:58 minutes.

What’s being boiled down today?

Jason Schreier, investigative reporter extraordinaire, exposed the transgressions surrounding the development of Cyberpunk 2077 — the biggest game of the year. Or was supposed to be, anyway.


All this whistle blowing is making our ears hurt

Credit: CD Projekt Red

What’s the fuss?

In Jason’s report, 20 current and former CD Projekt Red (the developer of the game) staff were interviewed. They all echoed the same sentiment: “a development process marred by unchecked ambition, poor planning and technical shortcomings”.

The situation

According to the anonymous sources, marketing took priority over the game’s development. In 2018, the studio showed off an impressive “gameplay” trailer that put fans in a frenzy. We now know this trailer was fake.

CD Projekt hadn’t yet finalized and coded the underlying gameplay systems, which is why so many features,… were missing from the final product. Developers said they felt like the demo was a waste of months that should have gone toward making the game.

Boiling it down

If the games development industry is famous for one thing, it’s crunch culture. Crunch is when game developers work an exorbitant amount of hours, including nights and weekends, in order to meet a deadline. Despite initial announcements that the studio would avoid this, CD Projekt Red told employees in September that six-day work weeks would be mandatory.

There were times when I would crunch up to 13 hours a day — a little bit over that was my record probably — and I would do five days a week working like that… I have some friends who lost their families because of these sort of shenanigans. 


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