In an interview with Kotaku, CD Projekt Red's co-founder Marcin Iwiński gave his views on the troubles regarding crunch culture in the gaming industry. The interview ended on a positive note, with Iwiński promising to be "more humane" towards developers under CD Projekt Red payroll, with upper management being publicly accountable towards their new non-obligatory crunch policy.
Gaming industry giants have been under fire the past few weeks due to some recently uncovered truths about how bad "crunch culture" has gotten in the industry. With all the industry trends leaning towards pre-orders, difficult deadlines, and commitments to gaming fans and player communities, developers have had to adjust work ethics and, more often than not, their biological clocks, to adapt to the increasing workload.
While several big-name studios are taking fire for oppresive culture and long work hours, crunch culture is ubiquitous in the industry. Riot Games (the company behind League of Legends), NetherRealm Studios (known for the Injustice franchise and the most recent Mortal Kombat titles), and Rockstar Games (the developers of GTA V and Red Dead Redemption) have all come under attack for abusing employees and for promoting hazardous and unfair crunch culture at their companies, but they're not the only ones who practice it. Even CD Projekt Red has admitted that the final work that was put into The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was a result of almost inhumane crunch and extremely long hours put in by developers under obligation to continue working in order to meet deadlines.
However, this announcement from CD Projekt Red - the inclusion of a non-obiligatory crunch policy, public accountability, and the commitment to more humane work standards - is a good thing. While they make no mention of trying to eliminate crunch compleltely - maybe it's just too difficult considering the industry status quo - they make overtime and long work hours something that developers can opt out of, and hold management accountable for, which is more than what most companies do.
CD Projekt Red is currently working on their upcoming and highly-anticipated Cyberpunk 2077, and while there is no official release date yet, we can be sure that fans will be willing to wait a little more if it means a more reasonable work culture for the developers that work hard on the games that they love.
