CD Projekt Red Is Trying to Treat its Developers "Humanely"

So, there’s been a lot of push back on the idea of crunch, and one developer who’s made no secret of their reliance on this detested practice is CD Projekt Red, who crunched the heck out of their Witcher games and have in the past defended crunch as simply part of their culture, which, even in a time before Kotaku and PC gamer reports, came off as a little bit gross. Perhaps to pre-empt any future tell-alls about the development of their latest project, Cyberpunk 2077, company co-founder Marcin Iwiński went to Kotaku to effectively say, “yeah there’s gonna be crunch but we’re gonna try to not be dicks about it”.

Here’s a direct quote:

“We’ve been working toward [treating developers with respect] for some time already… We’ve been communicating clearly to people that of course there are certain moments where we need to work harder—like I think the E3 demo is a pretty good example—but we want to be more humane and treat people with respect. If they need to take time off, they can take time off. Nobody will be frowned upon if this will be requested.”

He then continued to explain that his hope by going to Kotaku with this public statement was to communicate to his employees that it really is okay to request time off: which, to be fair, is a super admirable goal if taken at face value, as oftentimes the number one thing that prevents people from avoiding taking time off is stigma and threatening their jobs.

But what has yet to be seen is if this action actually translates to in-studio results. It’s all well and good to make this statement, but if employees still don’t feel safe and comfortable requesting time off, then it’s worse than nothing: it’s a straight-up lie.

Regardless, the whole interview is definitely worth a read. If only to watch someone try to walk on broken glass for a few minutes.