CD Projekt Red orders mandatory crunch for employees ahead of Cyberpunk 2077 launch

happyninja42

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They're being whipped by middle managers who can't schedule things properly. Except whippings, obviously.

A game journalist is hiding in an air vent scribbling it all down in his notepad. With one hand.
You could write some of the side missions for games like Judgement or Yakuza Zero Five Hundred: Dragon Super Dog Special: The Re-Rendering Sequel: Part 2. Now with more panty sniffing perverts who gain ACTUAL powers from doing so.
 
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Dwarvenhobble

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Just gonna add this in because it kind of helps point out perspective



They point out about Labour laws etc and you know how the Pandemic likely disrupted things.
 

TheMysteriousGX

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I'm curious why "Polish labor laws" are a thing getting brought up, considering nobody is thinking that CD Projekt Red is doing anything illegal
 

Dwarvenhobble

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I'm curious why "Polish labor laws" are a thing getting brought up, considering nobody is thinking that CD Projekt Red is doing anything illegal
It's not illegal but it's to put it in context.

Polish Law = you can't be made to do more than 8 hours overtime per week.
vs
Fortnite Crunch in the past where people were reportedly doing 30+ Extra hours a week on top of 50 hour weeks normally.

To give an example from long ago when I was an archery instructor. If I had to do set up that could be 1 hour. If I had to pack away that could be 1 hour. So if I had a shift I could easily end up working up to 2 more hours.

Some McDonalds restaurants do clean up and shit down which can take up to 1 hour and some places don't pay for that time so working a 5 day week and ending up on close could net some-one 5 hours overtime work unpaid.

CDPR's is paid overtime.
 

Baffle

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Lastly, your avatar is a trip. Kinda looks like a coked out Trump junior or something.
It's Rik Mayall (as Richard Richard; I think it's the episode where he wants to marry Lady Natasha Letitia Sarah Jane Wellesley Obstromsky Ponsonsky Smythe Smythe Smythe Smythe Smythe Oblomov Boblomov Dob, third Viscountess of Moldavia).
 
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Fieldy409

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I hear in some countries these guys are on salaries and aren't paid extra during crunch? If they aren't paid extra for overtime its probably just exploitation, but maybe if I'm generous I might say a project manager who truly didn't want to crunch is just shit at managing and setting deadlines their teams can meet. In a country where those crunchy boys get overttime pay as a higher up i'd definitely fire my fucking manager that just cost us a small fortune by failing to manage a project.
 
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Trunkage

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CDProjekt are renowned for their incompetent management skills. This blew up in their faces just after Witcher 3 was released. Clearly they have learnt nothing, just as they didnt in the lead up to Witcher 3. Why is cant be delayed a few weeks to get it right, I'll never understand.
 

XsjadoBlayde

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Hadn't realised they ever claimed to want to stop crunching tbh. The last i heard was after the last delay when people including myself were expressing hope it might've meant less pressure on the devs' work hours, amd CDProj was like "nah, lol...Totes still into that crunch, dont you worry lol!"
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Just gonna add this in because it kind of helps point out perspective



They point out about Labour laws etc and you know how the Pandemic likely disrupted things.

I’m curious how many hours a week Jason Schrier works. Would be kinda ironic if it’s more than the people he’s trying to “protect”.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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I’m curious how many hours a week Jason Schrier works. Would be kinda ironic if it’s more than the people he’s trying to “protect”.
yeh that would be kind of funny really lol

I hear in some countries these guys are on salaries and aren't paid extra during crunch? If they aren't paid extra for overtime its probably just exploitation, but maybe if I'm generous I might say a project manager who truly didn't want to crunch is just shit at managing and setting deadlines their teams can meet. In a country where those crunchy boys get overttime pay as a higher up i'd definitely fire my fucking manager that just cost us a small fortune by failing to manage a project.
Yeh it's likely also at a higher rate than normal time too in a lot of places who have overtime laws. If they're lucky it's 1.25 time but I've known some places where it can be up to 2.5 time pay.


CDProjekt are renowned for their incompetent management skills. This blew up in their faces just after Witcher 3 was released. Clearly they have learnt nothing, just as they didnt in the lead up to Witcher 3. Why is cant be delayed a few weeks to get it right, I'll never understand.
Also you know world wide Pandemic causing chaos on a project they've already delayed twice.

Also you know them deciding to use the time to re-do multiple systems (and at a guess over-estimating how much they could get done in the extra time)
 

Elijin

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These topics confuse me a lot because out in the real world, my life is surrounded by mandatory overtime because the world is complicated and messy.

My work can often involve crisis situations. We dont just brush them off because a shift has ended, or someone has put in their 40 hours this week.

My buddy is a network admin. It's a 8-5 job, but it's also mandatory for him to work 1-2 nights a week and maybe even a saturday, because of the amount of work which involves having the network down for maintenance and such, which just cant be done during the working day. That's not even counting when shit goes wrong.

So yeah, mandatory overtime is a confusing subject to me, because do y'all just work jobs you can walk away from at 5pm and it's like whatever?

Obviously working conditions and being paid for that overtime are something I can understand, but otherwise I'm lost at the outrage.
 
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SupahEwok

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While it's all technically overtime, I don't consider it as such because it's part of my job and there are about 12 weekends a year I have to give up for the job. Improved working conditions would not change the fact that my factory is in Thailand and I have to work late into the night sometimes, because no change in working conditions are going to change how timezones work. No improvement of working conditions will make trade shows not occur on weekends.
Good boss would give you extra PTO or Monday & Tuesday off when you have to work a 7 day week. And would let you come in late if you needed to stay late.
 
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Baffle

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I work in a job in which I can literally be forbidden under the law from leaving my workplace if there's an urgent need for me to stay in order to guarantee patient safety. I've been in situation where I had to pull double shifts (7am to 10pm for reference), go home to get 6 hours of sleep and then pull another double shift straight afterwards because no other nurse was available. So yeah, I get that the real world is complicated and messy some times.

However, the difference between me and any of the developers at CDPR, Rockstar, Paradox or any other developer is that people don't risk getting seriously hurt or dying if they decide to not force extra shifts. The worst they can suffer is a delayed release which can lead to a loss of sales. At the very worst that means the company goes bankrupt and people lose their jobs, but that's a long term process and the risk of this can be mitigated by careful management, just as crunch avoidance can.

In essence, some times overtime needs to be done that's just how it is, but it should always be avoided as much as possible. The kind of overtime that's rampant in the games industry, with mandatory overtime for months on end, is especially bad and should be done away with entirely.
This hits the nail on the head. While I thoroughly disagree with the idea of compulsory overtime, it's about balancing the consequences. If I don't work a lot of hours, I might lose a client because I miss a deadline I agreed to (I probably won't though), but nothing really bad can happen. No one will die. No one will be even slightly injured. Honestly, I'd be surprised if anyone was even inconvenienced. And video games absolutely fall into the same non-critical bracket as my work -- certainly not worth forcing people into silly hours or stressful situations or messing up their work--life balance.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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Covid throwing off work processes and thus schedules is a valid excuse. The quoted section is yet another proof of mismanagement though. If you're throwing half-baked systems you don't like into your masterpiece and then decide to change them up close to launch, that's on you.
It's possibly more "Oh we have all this time lets polish these systems up far more. Oh we need to remove them and remake them to do the changes? OK"