CD Project now has a heavy liability regarding the living conditions of its employees. The abusive crunch periods that had been put in place during the development of Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 had made so much noise that the studio felt compelled to promise not to do it again when it was announced. Witcher 4.
They also assured that they had set up a charter in order to improve the working environment within the studio following the scandal of 2021. Today, with these experiences which, we hope, are behind them, they announce a social breakthrough that many have been waiting for impatiently: paid menstrual leave for female employees.
Why start on this specific ground?
Unfortunately, there are many areas that are still far behind socially in the world of work, so one might wonder why CD Projekt tackles menstrual leave in the first place. Far from being less important than the others, the subject is certainly not the one we talk about the most. And this is precisely the reason behind this choice.
Set up by GOGa company attached to CD Projekt, menstrual leave is meant to be the first step towards solving the problems we don’t talk about simply because we don’t dare to talk about it.
This is the philosophy of GOG: highlight what is disturbing so that one day it can be trivialized. The initiative was launched in early April and the platform Axios confirms that the measures announced have been put in place (source). The company acknowledges that it “there are biological differences in the workplace“and affirms that as a result”menstrual leave promotes inclusion“.
Many companies seem to be considering taking this step, as painful menstruation is increasingly seen as a serious and requiring leave. Our colleagues from gaming pc were able to contact Radek Grabowskipublic relations director of CD Projekt, who told them that it was indeed only the beginning and that this GOG initiative was “currently under consideration for all of CD Projekt“.
Video games as the spearhead of social progress?
The video game industry is often the scene of scandals concerning the working conditions of staff. We often talk about crunch practice which has also extended to the world of start-ups in general and the famous visible payments rather than a salary for artists starting out in this medium. Since this is an area that attracts, companies allow themselves to set sometimes deplorable conditions simply because they know that no matter how many employees leave, they will always have at least as many arriving.
If we go into more detail, we see that women are the most discriminated against. The video game industry, parallel to that of computing in general, is a perfect example of male dominance bourdieusienne where the place of women is constantly called into question. Even after many protests, demonstrations, even laws, abuse persists. Just look at the ongoing Activision-Blizzard affair that seems set to last.
That being said, the benefit, if any, of this environment is that business is widely publicized and so we talk about it openly. Faced with this bad press, companies can no longer hide and pretend that they did not know what was going on in their premises. This is why we are seeing more and more measures taking shape that are gradually leading us towards a healthier environment.
In addition to the GOG initiative, we can recall that Guerilla Games decided to delay the release of Horizon Forbidden West to prevent developers from cracking under the workload and Bandai Namco Mobile is currently testing the fully paid four-day work week in real conditions.
When you see what the gaming community is capable of accomplishing, if only in France with events like the ZEvent or SpeedDons for example, we can only hope that these are the foundations of the video game business of tomorrow!
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