The most popular video game developer CD Project Red declares mandatory 6-day work weeks for till this November for its employees. The announcement is made on this Monday. As a reason, the company shows the launch of the highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077.
Earlier, Red, the subsidiary of CD Project SA, has been criticized for the overtime working in game development, denoted by the term “crunch.” This practice lasts for a week and can go even further for a month or a year. Record of the past year says the co-chief executive officer of CD Project Red, Marcin Iwinski, said to Kotaku, a gaming website, that they would avoid mandatory crunch and allow the employees to work without overtime.
But it seems, CD Project Red is not keeping its words at all. As per one of the employees, some of the staff are assigned at nights and weekends for over a year.
In an email to the employees, the CD Project Red studio head Adam Badowski wrote, “Starting today, the entire (development) studio is in overdrive,” All the employees will get paid for the extra hours as the Polish labor law describes.
“I take it upon myself to receive the full backlash for the decision,” – Badowski. “I know this is in direct opposition to what we’ve said about crunch. It’s also in direct opposition to what I personally grew to believe a while back — that crunch should never be the answer. But we’ve extended all other possible means of navigating the situation.”
In response to the questions of Bloomberg, CD Project’s Chief Financial Officer Piotr Nielubowicz emailed – the launch date of Cyberpunk, i.e., 19th November, won’t be changed, the studio is working to fix the maximum number of bugs at “the last straight.” It’s the main reason to ask the employees to do a day extra.
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