Redefine07
Member
I loved CDPR now I hate them for doing this , hope they fail and all those good people will find new jobs where they are paid for what they do fair , bye bye CDPR.
Most countries have overtime laws. They're easily bypassed with waivers. CDPR developers were working 100 hour weeks on games like The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. It's all under the guise of "voluntary" but people are bullied into it. AAA game development is full of bullying and peer pressure and collective punishment.Overview of Polish labor laws.
Unless CDPR is breaking the law, nobody is working more than 48 hours per week, and you are legally prohibited from working more than 18.75 extra days at 8 hours a day per year.
Now the constant 100 hour weeks of the bad old days are bullshit unless you're the CEO (people who think CEOs of large companies have "personal lives" are hilariously misinformed), but let's cut the shit about the 'sweatshop' conditions of 48 hours per week.
I can't remember the last time I only worked 48 hours.
"This meant that many people felt obligated to continue working under the poor conditions because they feared that the company would not pay up the overtime they had accrued. "Company's discretion" is incredibly vague, so nobody wanted to publicly speak out about the working conditions in case there was retribution from management. Then there was the issue of when the overtime was due to be paid - we (rightly) assumed that people would be made redundant at the end of the project, so would these people still be paid their overtime since they wouldn't be with Team Bondi three months after the end of the project? Also, since the overtime was only to be paid out at the end of the project, it meant that if the game failed and Team Bondi went bankrupt, then nobody would have received overtime payment. Team Bondi being shut down was always a very real possibility for us, it was only thanks to Rockstar's bankrolling that they continued to survive. I mention these points to enforce that it was always very unclear whether this overtime would be paid."
Overview of Polish labor laws.
Unless CDPR is breaking the law, nobody is working more than 48 hours per week, and you are legally prohibited from working more than 18.75 extra days at 8 hours a day per year.
Now the constant 100 hour weeks of the bad old days are bullshit unless you're the CEO (people who think CEOs of large companies have "personal lives" are hilariously misinformed), but let's cut the shit about the 'sweatshop' conditions of 48 hours per week.
I can't remember the last time I only worked 48 hours.
I dunno, I haven't been either for half a decade.Isnt that for hourly, not salaried?
Xbox One version is nearly unplayable I refunded my digital purchase. I don’t mind waiting till I can play the game properly.
No, they do not. EA have very firm anti-crunch policies and extremely high employee satisfaction partially for that reason. I'm not sure why you'd make a claim like that.What are you talking about? They still crunch.
Because it wasn't happening under EA's watch. EA's behavior was exemplary. Bioware was autonomous, had always been terrible, and got away with a lot of stuff EA corporate would never have tolerated if they'd known about it.And why is EA given a pass for Bioware? "Best company around" allows multiple studios under their employ to crunch at the same time, but that's okay because...?
Name a single field outside gaming where crunching on a project for years without stopping is normal. It's not. Nobody else runs projects like that. The games industry is uniquely terrible. Nobody should join the games industry if they can avoid it. It's soul crushing. Project management in the videogame space is a joke compared to normal software dev. There are not bursts of crunch to meet deadlines. There are literal YEARS of non-stop crunch to meet impossible deadlines that get pushed back forever. Death march is normal in game dev. It is considered a sign of completely incompetence outside of game dev.also, crunch is everywhere in tech. Fucking everywhere. To pretend it is unique to games is a lie, and not even a good one.
You can't force people to crunch when they have the government behind them. Either conditions improve, or the game doesn't get made. And the government investigators start handing out fines. Attempting to fire people in retribution is also highly illegal in most countries. America has no protections whatsoever, and like I say, companies try to weasel out of protections with waivers.If you are working on a product, especially one with a fixed date, there is always a possibility of overtime and crunch. No union or government intervention is going to change that.
shh dont badmouth CDPR please...
they are angel that make games for human!
Are you serious? Bioware is owned by EA. Yes, they crunched...under EA's watch. 3 different studios, on 2 different projects. All owned by EANo, they do not. EA have very firm anti-crunch policies and extremely high employee satisfaction partially for that reason. I'm not sure why you'd make a claim like that.
Because it wasn't happening under EA's watch. EA's behavior was exemplary. Bioware was autonomous, had always been terrible, and got away with a lot of stuff EA corporate would never have tolerated if they'd known about it.
Name a single field outside gaming where crunching on a project for years without stopping is normal. It's not. Nobody else runs projects like that. The games industry is uniquely terrible. Nobody should join the games industry if they can avoid it. It's soul crushing.
You can't force people to crunch when they have the government behind them. Either conditions improve, or the game doesn't get made. And the government investigators start handing out fines. Attempting to fire people in retribution is also highly illegal in most countries. America has no protections whatsoever, and like I say, companies try to weasel out of protections with waivers.
"I feel extremely stressed and burnt out trying to keep our seasonal releases on the same aggressive timeline as pre-shelter," the review reads. "I currently work 12 to 13 hours a day and there is no separation between my home and work life.
"We have no idea how to do a live service project, which means poor planning decisions and no sizing of work, means we actually have very little idea of how much we can accomplish in a given month."
The employee added that no attention has been paid to the team's health, exacerbated by conflicting messages of "please take care of your health" and expecting longer hours to meet the same deadlines.
"I am so burned out that I am considering leaving without a next job to go to just so mentally I can be in a better place," the post concludes.
This is moronic. "No one should join the gaming industry." Okay dudeName a single field outside gaming where crunching on a project for years without stopping is normal. It's not. Nobody else runs projects like that. The games industry is uniquely terrible. Nobody should join the games industry if they can avoid it. It's soul crushing.
You poor, poor child. Whatever you need to tell yourselfYou can't force people to crunch when they have the government behind them. Either conditions improve, or the game doesn't get made. And the government investigators start handing out fines. Attempting to fire people in retribution is also highly illegal in most countries. America has no protections whatsoever, and like I say, companies try to weasel out of protections with waivers.
Are you serious? Bioware is owned by EA. Yes, they crunched...under EA's watch. 3 different studios, on 2 different projects. All owned by EA
oh yeah, EA is perfect. Exemplary.I guess when you outsource your crunch to other studios, that you own, you get a pass.
They are not perfect. They crunch like everyone else. Wanna know how I know. Because they work on a retail product.
This is moronic. No one should join the gaming industry." Okay dude
Name like, any start-up. Any healthcare project come end of the year. Overtime is not some unique thing that only exists in gaming.
You poor, poor child. Whatever you need to tell yourself
the witcher has amazing combat. 10/10 would buy again!
While this is a fair point, it boils down to studios like Respawn being unable to adjust to COVID conditions with pre-existing deadlines. Instead of going to EA and saying, "We won't hit this leadline," they insist on hitting it anyway despite lowered work capacity. This isn't the publisher's fault. EA's anti-crunch mandate is clear, and studios like DICE are adamant that they will not allow it. If studios are disobeying behind the scenes, that's on them. Electronic Arts are extremely considerate of their employees.Are you serious? Bioware is owned by EA. Yes, they crunched...under EA's watch. 3 different studios, on 2 different projects. All owned by EA
Respawn studios had to come out and issue a press release because an employee posted about the crunch....just this year.
We are not talking about normal overtime. We are not talking about typical project crunch where people have to meet a deadline and work really hard to hit it. We are talking about the videogame industry's very special branch of crunch that starts and then never ends. People working 12+ hours a day for week after week, month after month, year after year.Name like, any start-up. Any healthcare project come end of the year. Overtime is not some unique thing that only exists in gaming.
Game has a 90 score on metacritic tho.
Well folks, it seems CD Projekt decided to appease to the PC Masterbating Race and screwed over everyone else who games. (No Getting ITT this time!)
"I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on these motherfucking planes!" - Sammy David Jr. After watching Digital Foundry's recent video exposing the sheer incompetence of CD Projekt Red when it came to releasing a proper port of the game on last-gen consoles, I realized how anti-consumer...www.neogaf.com
I have to assume you're American,
and view this issue through the lens of America's basically non-existent worker protections and kind of bonkers work culture where, for example, tipping is a thing.
I don't mean that as an insult or to sound smug, but rather as the base reason we'll never see eye to eye on this.
The dominance of America in discussions around videogame labour issues is a problem because America's labour laws are a joke. America's work culture is a joke.
You seem to think that "Just get another job" is a workable solution in an industry that will blacklist anyone who steps out of line.
This is why devs will only speak anonymously. Anything else will attract the wrath of the robber-barons.
The AAA games industry has a broken model that treats employees like garbage, so they burn out, and are replaced with fresh faced "passionate" recruits. The industry is constantly bleeding talent as a result.
Most devs don't last longer than a few years. Job security is almost non-existent.
Ship a game that sells 10 million copies, and get laid off anyway,
while the executives reap the benefits.
Anyone who leaves a project is punished by having their name removed from the credits, a practice considered unacceptable in mediums such as film which have unions.
Videogames need unions.
They need government intervention.
The Australian government should have come down on Team Bondi like a ton of bricks, for example. So much of what they were doing was immoral and illegal.
But the videogame industry is adept at weaseling out of responsibility, finding ways not to pay bonuses, avoiding local labour laws by forcing employees to sign waivers, and so on.
Many AAA publishers and devs are extremely abusive, exploitative workplaces, with a few bright spots like Electronic Arts, who treat their employees extremely well because people in leadership believe in the welfare of their employees.
not defending it but they aren't the only ones. somehow Rockstar gets a pass despite the crunch they do.They treat there workers like shit anyway... Countless stories
I'm not working in industry (I'm business software developer) and even I was told that if I would want to change my career and go to gamedev then I should never ever apply to CDP.Word gets out about how bad a studio is pretty quickly nowdays, even if casual consumers (and management) remain in denial and think everything is peachy.
What reviews are left? CyberPunk has a 90 rating on 69 reviewsSeems like it's a total shit show on Ps4 and Xbox, so this makes sense cause that meta is going to go through the floor when the versions that most are actually going to play start getting scores
What reviews are left? CyberPunk has a 90 rating on 69 reviews
PC version. Also 6.1 user score which will only go lower from here because that’s the nature of user scores on MC. Also sites that will review the console version will rip it apart.
CDPR got too big and it's awfull work culture and management style is not working anymore. Even durring Witcher 3 development they had huge problems with crunch and other work related problems and it only got worse.CDPR got too big and too succesfull, so these western companies need to drag it down - it's called competition.
Rockstar is not operating in country where demand for IT specialist is way bigger than supply. There are estimates that Poland needs 50k-100k more IT specialist that it has. What you think what happens when senior developer decides that he has enough of his current management? How long till he finds better job? My current team in last 2 years hired 2 developers. Not because we don't need more people, but because only two candidates send they CV in that time.not defending it but they aren't the only ones. somehow Rockstar gets a pass despite the crunch they do.
CDPR got too big and it's awfull work culture and management style is not working anymore. Even durring Witcher 3 development they had huge problems with crunch and other work related problems and it only got worse.
Crunch is crunch but it varies between countries and between industries, companies, bosses, CEOs, Managers etc.Crunch is crunch, right? Or are you saying vary between countries?
I used to really love everything he wrote too, years ago. He just got a few readers and took it in an extremist direction.So....Jason Screecher is upset that people working longer and harder are getting compensated for it?
They're scared of the metacritic score dropping below 90 cus Management rushed the game out and decided they're not gonna do metacritic bonuses and will just give the bonuses no matter what since there's a chance it'll drop below
It's pretty damn closeIt is dropping to 89 any second now. That's a travesty for arguably the most hyped game of modern times. Missed the mark massively.
not defending it but they aren't the only ones. somehow Rockstar gets a pass despite the crunch they do.
double standards.
No, they do not. EA have very firm anti-crunch policies and extremely high employee satisfaction partially for that reason. I'm not sure why you'd make a claim like that.
I knew it. My tax money goes to pay for your drug habits!I dunno, I haven't been either for half a decade.
% of load when I was a lease operator, and performance pay as a company driver. I have the incentive to not fuck off, and my boss both knows how hungry I am for work, and doesn't have to metaphorically look over my shoulder.I knew it. My tax money goes to pay for your drug habits!
No. I actually forgot who that was. But he seemed pretty legit.% of load when I was a lease operator, and performance pay as a company driver. I have the incentive to not fuck off, and my boss both knows how hungry I am for work, and doesn't have to metaphorically look over my shoulder.
Edit - I forget, are you the Gaffer that owns a trucking company?