No sooner had the announcement of a new The Witcher game been announced than the ghosts of CD Projekt Red’s past bad decisions reappeared: during the development of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3some employees had suffered periods of intensive crunch which had not been well received by the community.
Has the studio learned from its mistakes? It would seem so.
What is the crunch?
This term strongly linked to the video game industry does not have a good press. Popularized in 2004 by a studio developer Electronic Artsthis word refers to theintense period of work preceding the release of the game, a period during which developers are under constant pressure and do not have to count their overtime hours (which are generally not paid). The worst publicized case is that of Red Dead Redemption 2 from Rockstar Games, a crunch that involved for some studio employees up to 100 hours of work per week (as a reminder, a week is 168 hours in all, nights and weekends included).
So it’s not a very healthy practice, and CD Projekt Red paid the price during the development of The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. Both games had had their release date pushed back, and to limit the delays, the studio had gone into intensive crunch in its teams, which didn’t have a very good media effect for the two titles.
What philosophy for The Witcher 4?
After Jason Slama’s tweet announcing his taking over as head of the next title The Witcher, a communication that also served as a reminder that positions were open in his team to work on the project, a number of people replied that‘in view of the working conditions at CD Projekt Red, they were not going to apply.
Responding to one of those tweets saying it was probably off to a horrible crunch, Slama soberly replied: “Not on my watch” (“Not under my supervision”, editor’s note). Having already done a very good job as Game Director on the game Gwent, whose team did not have to suffer the same pressures as the other studio teams, we can trust him to ensure a healthy work environment to the developers of The Witcher 4.
The studio had also publicly announced in 2021 that measures had been (and were continuing to be) taken to ensure working conditions conducive to employee development.
The eyes of CD Projekt Red fans are now on the next installment in The Witcher saga. Faced with such an expectation, the studio will have to be clear and sincere in its communication to avoid Cyberpunk dramas. Today, we find out who will lead the project.