CD Projekt Red Staff Didn't Know About Delays Before We Did

We learned the other day that CD Projekt Red's presumed magnum opus and probable game of the year, Cyberpunk 2077, was suddenly being delayed by three weeks in order to ensure that it'd be ready for next-gen consoles. Originally, the most unusual thing about that announcement was the fact that we already knew Cyberpunk 2077 had "gone gold", and it's not very typical for games to be delayed after they're already on their disks. However, in the 24 hours since, we learned there's another unusual facet to this delay: as it turns out, most of the employees at the company learned about it at the same time we did.

In a report from Game Informer:

When the news broke, I spoke with several CD Projekt Red developers who confirmed they didn't know about the delay until they received an internal email shortly before the announcement went live on Twitter.

CD Projekt Red then confirmed that the reason this delay was withheld from their employees came down to Polish law:

Speaking with a representative from CD Projekt Red, they confirmed to Game Informer that the Polish law is the reason behind the team at large not knowing about the delay until the day of, in addition to that being a decision just recently made. While this is a standard for many studios outside of the U.S., usually U.S.-based studios have more of a notice regarding events such as a delay.

Game Informer's report also emphasized the mood in the CD Projekt Red office, and how the delay has impacted it:

"...there was laughter and tears from the team because they are excited for people to play their game that has been years in the making, and the delay came out of nowhere and pushes back that experience for all. The laughter and excitement for launch is palpable throughout the studio, but the team knew how the news of the delay would be received. There's a deeper conversation here regarding what that means in terms of workload, which we are still actively working on."

Finally: a three week delay does mean that crunch time will be extended for the people over at CD Projekt Red. While no one has spoken to the press on this issue, co-CEO Adam Kiciński told investors in a call:

Of course it’s a story that has been picked up by the media, and some people have been crunching heavily, but a large part of the team is not crunching at all since they have finished their work; it’s mostly about Q&A and engineers, programmers – but it’s not that heavy; of course, it will be extended a bit, but we have feedback from the team; they’re happy about the extra three weeks, so we don’t see any threats regarding crunch.

All-in-all, there's a lot of drama swimming around the biggest game release of the year. I can't help but wonder if all this hype, incidental or otherwise, can possibly live up to the game we're about to receive.