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Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

polygon.com

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Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#41

Post by 0xy »

ekianjo wrote: post #25
0xy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The delays were sheer incompetence and are far from normal in the gaming industry. You don't guarantee to fans personally that the game will definitely come out at a date (which is less than a month away) then delay it the next day. This indicates that nobody even knew how bad it was. There's also rumors developers found out about the delays from social media. CDPR execs are just incompetent and unable to set realist…

> The delays were sheer incompetence and are far from normal in the gaming industry. Oh, so building something that was never done before and not meeting the deadline exactly is sheer incompetence? I hope you never have to build anything new.

Every game is something "never done before". And I did not say not meeting deadlines is sheer incompetence. I said the way they slipped is incompetence. Less than a month from release while blindsiding their own company and fans.

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#42

Post by vvanders »

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Once with a 6 months crunch, second time closer to 10 months of 14 hour days. That was enough for me to swear off the entire industry despite working towards it for most of my younger life.

Saw it what it did to our team, destroyed multiple relationships, the product suffered for it and overall both titles we're a disaster.

It cuts in more than one way, aside from some really rare cases the industry compensation is abysmal compared to traditional software engineering. I basically doubled my take home salary leaving the industry while also having a sane work life balance.

Rami Ismail of Nuclear Throne sums is up well[1]:

> In these situations we don't even expect everyone to get through unscathed. It's like management calculates the amount of churn, of burnout, of careers, relations, happiness that will be lost and goes "well, that's not too big a sacrifice to undo the damage of our incompetence".

Fuck em. They deserve nothing for putting a team through hell like that. Chances are they aren't the ones to pay for the damage their crunch does in the end.

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/tha_rami/status/13356988209702543...

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#43

Post by claudeganon »

ekianjo wrote: post #26
joejohnson wrote: post #18

The video game industry needs to learn from the film industry and unionize for better pay and working conditions.

> The video game industry needs to learn from the film industry and unionize for better pay and working conditions. Is Hollywood a successful business model though? Most movies don't make much in the end - we only see the most successful ones.

"Los Angeles County contributed $656 billion in gross domestic product, or 27 percent of California’s economic output, in 2015, according to a Bloomberg analysis of the most-recent data available from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That’s the largest amount of goods and services produced among 3,000-plus counties in the U.S. and equal to the economic might of Saudi Arabia."

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:atHjZM...

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#44

Post by 0xy »

detaro wrote: post #40
0xy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're implying I made a claim I never made. I never said it justified it.

Then I'm not sure why you put it in reply to a comment that just talked about how they don't understand how people could do that, if it's not relevant to the threats.

Because the OP was about angry customers, not exclusively about death threats. Of course people are angry, because they in many cases actually lost something. In many companies, you book leave months out and cannot change it.

They were still promising there would be no more delays with less than a month to go, even saying only a natural disaster would stop them. Now we know that's a lie, and they were deliberately misleading customers.

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#45

Post by temp20160423 »

denkmoon wrote: post #32
defen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a software developers’ union. Big projects like this use a lot of third party tooling; imagine if a decent percentage of those said “we won’t license this to you unless you’re a union shop” or something like that. And said union would enforce humane working conditions.

Us software developers are too smart for organised labour. And why would companies like Epic restrict their revenues like that? Epic too sees financial gain from their developers working excessive (potentially unpaid) overtime, no doubt. Unions are necessarily devised and lead by workers, not beneficent corps.

That's correct. If you're a software developer and interested in maximizing pay while minimizing stress, you obviously avoid the gaming industry. The only news here is that the company seems to have reneged on the promise it made, but it's not obvious how a union would have solved this problem. Would the union help get the game shipped on time?

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#46

Post by xwdv »

vvanders wrote: post #42

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Once with a 6 months crunch, second time closer to 10 months of 14 hour days. That was enough for me to swear off the entire industry despite working towards it for most of my younger life. Saw it what it did to our team, destroyed multiple relationships, the product suffered for it and overall both titles we're a disaster. It cuts in more than one way, aside from some really r…

Imagine talking an overworked employee out of blowing his own brains out, so he can at least finish the work he has left to do and then you can lay him off.

That’s the game industry.

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#47

Post by defen »

denkmoon wrote: post #32
defen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a software developers’ union. Big projects like this use a lot of third party tooling; imagine if a decent percentage of those said “we won’t license this to you unless you’re a union shop” or something like that. And said union would enforce humane working conditions.

Us software developers are too smart for organised labour. And why would companies like Epic restrict their revenues like that? Epic too sees financial gain from their developers working excessive (potentially unpaid) overtime, no doubt. Unions are necessarily devised and lead by workers, not beneficent corps.

There’s a definite chicken and egg problem. I think it would have to be a grassroots bottom up thing starting with small vendors, because I agree the big vendors aren’t going to do this on their own. But the small vendors are probably the least financially able to make a principled stand on something like this.

You’re probably right that software devs as a group are generally too egocentric or libertarian minded to engage in any sort of collective action for their own benefit.

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#48

Post by defen »

temp20160423 wrote: post #45
denkmoon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Us software developers are too smart for organised labour. And why would companies like Epic restrict their revenues like that? Epic too sees financial gain from their developers working excessive (potentially unpaid) overtime, no doubt. Unions are necessarily devised and lead by workers, not beneficent corps.

That's correct. If you're a software developer and interested in maximizing pay while minimizing stress, you obviously avoid the gaming industry. The only news here is that the company seems to have reneged on the promise it made, but it's not obvious how a union would have solved this problem. Would the union help get the game shipped on time?

A union’s role would be to enforce humane working conditions, not to ensure that a company achieves arbitrary financial goals.

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#49

Post by gotoeleven »

Aeolun wrote: post #3

That’s dissapointing. Especially after they ‘promised’ they wouldn’t do it. I wonder what the solution is here. Boycotting the game is hardly going to help the employees there. I guess this is just one of those things that the law should mandate, but does not for some reason.

I agree. Also, buff dudes spend a long time at the gym and it makes me look bad compared to them so I don't think they should be allowed to go to the gym so much.

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#50

Post by memonkey »

sim_card_map wrote: post #11

And billions of profits go to owners and shareholders, while developers crunch 80 hours/week for $2000-3000/month.

You're getting a lot of hate for this comment but I think it's an important discussion.

It isn't easy to "just go somewhere else" or "start your own thing" for a variety of reasons. The reality is that the majority of these game developers aren't getting job offers every day and don't have access to the kind of capital necessary to start a company.

It's flippant to suggest that these developers can just find another job, because the other reality is that most of these developers would only be able to find jobs doing the same thing but under a different moniker.

People in other places in this thread have produced some solutions, which I think is somewhere along the lines of organizing and unionizing, and I think that would help for bigger companies who are known to exploit these workers.

Whatever the solution, history has shown that you cannot rely on a company's word that they won't do this anymore.

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