CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077 is out in less than seven weeks and the pressure is on. Despite the developer promising to avoid mandatory crunch for the title, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier revealed that crunch is indeed happening for the final stretch (though several developers have also been working overtime for the past year). Studio head Adam Badowski has since responded to the report, noting that these “last six weeks are our final sprint on a project we’ve all spent much of our lives on. Something we care for deeply.”
Badowski says that the majority of the team “understands that push” especially with the game recently being sent for certification. “This is one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make, but everyone is well compensated for every extra hour they put in.” In addition, he confirmed that like in recent years, 10 percent of the annual profit generated by the company this year would be “split directly among the team.”
The developer has had issues with crunch for quite a while now, dating back to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. When Cyberpunk 2077 was still slated to launch on April 16th this year, CD Projekt RED’s John Mamais admitted that the studio was “pushing it to the wall” to meet the tight deadline. Following its first delay to September 17th, CD Projekt joint CEO Adam Kicinski said that “some degree” of crunch was happening to prepare the game for launch. And then there was the delay to November, especially with the studio firmly committed to releasing it by then.
How the studio will continue to deal with crunch remains to be seen, especially with multiplayer, post-launch updates and expansions coming to Cyberpunk 2077 (not to mention next-gen versions planned for next year). In the meantime, the game is slated to release on November 19th for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.