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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

#111

Post by me_me_me »

dx87 wrote: post #8
nightski wrote: post #2

What is even more baffling to me is the sheer rage and lack of humanity of fans towards the developers when they delayed it several times. There was a lot of hate including death threats to the developers. I understand the internet brings out the worst in people but I can't imagine anyone desiring to be a game developer at this point.

It's not like every fan was acting like that. "We've received death threats" has become a tool to try and change the topic from whatever made people upset.

Yes couple of teenagers and mental children sent some. That doesn't mean that the whole player base want them dead over delivery date.

Its just very vocal fringe minority.

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

#112

Post by ClumsyPilot »

ekianjo wrote: post #28
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.

Devs are always free to go indie and make it big for themselves. But it's a LOT harder than it sounds. So your point is?

You seem to be making a universal argument that does not engage with the subject and justifies any kind of abusive employment plactices

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

#113

Post by 411111111111111 »

ekianjo wrote: post #88
memonkey wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is just that profits do not end up going to the people doing the majority of the work.

People doing the majority of the work would not be able to be paid to work for 2 - 3 years non stop on a project if nobody above them had sufficient funds in the first place. What do you expect?

The issue is lowish wage with unhealthy workloads combined with the fact that the people doing the least amount of work get extremely high rewards.

It just shows that the aristocracy is alive and doing well even in this modern world. Unsurprising to anyone that actually paid attention but there are a lot of developers who never realized that they're peasants, still.

there are industries where we can get a decent wage as software developers however, so life is fine for most of us.

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

#114

Post by AndrewOMartin »

caenn wrote: post #104
ksec wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for derailing the discussion a little bit. Is this everyone including Graphics designers? Not just developers? Why are the economics of Gaming so not aligned? The cost of making Games are going up YoY. Revenue and Profits seems to be up too. We have better middleware like Unreal than ever before, and yet the cost keep going up but not salary. And it seems Nintendo doesn't have any of these problem. Someone plea…

Very large of supply of young people who really want to work in games as a thing in of itself. As opposed to the standard software industry where, at least to my experience, most people spend quite some time thinking about the money they'll make.

Yep this. It's fundamental supply and demand economics. It happens in any sector that's perceived to be fun or attractive. See also 'work for exposure' in photography and music.

It seems to me that the on the opposite end of the scale you have Database administrator. Pretty much all non-trivial software projects need databases, their proper administration is absolutely essential, and it's the least sexy sounding role in a software team.

My (completely untested, and semi-serious) career advice is to read a reference manual for a database like PostgreSQL cover to cover.

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

#115

Post by [deleted] »

yread wrote: post #109
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.

We don't need a union we need a fucking bar. If you pass a bar exam, you get to charge 350 eur/h like my lawyer. And if you do questionable shit you could be disbarred

[deleted]

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

#116

Post by koheripbal »

me_me_me wrote: post #111
dx87 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like every fan was acting like that. "We've received death threats" has become a tool to try and change the topic from whatever made people upset.

Yes couple of teenagers and mental children sent some. That doesn't mean that the whole player base want them dead over delivery date. Its just very vocal fringe minority.

You are right, but social media has a tendency of amplifying the voices of its most dysfunctional members.

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

#117

Post by koheripbal »

ekianjo wrote: post #20
nightski wrote: post #2

What is even more baffling to me is the sheer rage and lack of humanity of fans towards the developers when they delayed it several times. There was a lot of hate including death threats to the developers. I understand the internet brings out the worst in people but I can't imagine anyone desiring to be a game developer at this point.

> There was a lot of hate including death threats to the developers Hate is cheap on Twitter

Hate is Twitter's currency.

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

#118

Post by koheripbal »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #85
buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop implying that anyone is suggesting threatening devs is ok. GP in no way implied this at all. You can point out the delays are do to incompetence without agreeing that death threats are ok.

You're misrepresenting GGP's comment. They mentioned incompetence so as to exculpate the people getting bent up about a video game coming out a few months late — behavior that, as GGGP described it, included death threats.

> They mentioned incompetence so as to exculpate the people

You are ascribing intent where there is none. We need to stop framing conversations based upon the extremists in the population.

The root comment is full of hyperbole, but there is no indication he supports death threats, that's just silly.

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

#119

Post by geofft »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #98
geofft wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the dynamic: When you don't take all your allotted vacation, and someone else does, there's no possible claim that you were a harder or more dedicated worker than they were. They did exactly what they were permitted to. And, therefore, I'm guessing that if you wanted to take your vacation, you wouldn't have too much trouble finding time to take it, and nobody would complain that you did. If there's unlimited v…

One thing I've wondered is how the dynamic would work if you combined unlimited vacation with a minimum requirement. Would that be enough to foster a culture of taking the time you want/need and not worrying? Or would your minimum essentially become the expected amount, with any excess frowned upon?

The thing about "unlimited vacation" policies is there's always a limit. Obviously it can't be 52 weeks. Probably it can't even be 10 weeks. So the question is where that unstated number is.

If the number is the same for everyone, state it. Go ahead and say "Everyone gets 6 weeks vacation." If you don't feel comfortable saying that, then it wasn't unlimited at all, was it?

If the number is different, i.e., junior employees can take less, politically-connected folks and people who figured out how to coast can take more, that's probably a bad thing for your company. At best, make additional vacation a defined promotion benefit.

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

#120

Post by xiphias2 »

nine_k wrote: post #101

All it might take is for customers to say: "Okay, I don't need it for Christmas, I can wait until March, or maybe even June, for a real good game". Not very realistic, unfortunately.

For me what would be better is ,,Okay, I don't want to play it all through, just give me the first half, and take your time with the second''. But maybe it's because I'm not a fast player generally. Anyways, companies compete how they can, I vote with my wallet.
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