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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

#121

Post by jakelazaroff »

geofft wrote: post #119
jakelazaroff wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 em…

That's fair. I guess the appeal to me as an employee is that I don't want to like count and ration my vacation days. As long as I can take the time I feel I want/need/deserve without worrying I don't care about making sure I'm maximizing my allowed vacation or even how it compares to other people. But maybe that's not feasible via policy or lack thereof, and having a set number of vacation days is the least worst way to do this thing.

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

#122

Post by shaftway »

uberman wrote: post #94
orev wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same problem with companies that have a “no vacation tracking, just take off when you want policy”. It ends up that no one takes vacation for this same reason.

I see two people with this viewpoint, and I would be interested in knowing more. Is the thought here that a company that offers unlimited vacation would see people take none? I have never worked in such an environment, and I also don't tend to take all of my allotted vacation anyways, but at first glance, I'm not sure how: "take off as much as you like" could possibly be more restrictive than: "take off as much as yo…

I think your second model isn't exactly accurate. I think it's more like:

"take off as much as you like, but no more than you've earned; you earn 2 weeks each year and can't bank more than 5 weeks"

It's a subtle difference, but an important one. I usually bank vacation time up to my cap (typically 240 hours, but recently bumped to 300 hours). Once I'm close I take every other friday off.

When coworkers ask about it my answer is "I'm at the vacation cap, so if I don't take this time off I lose it."

This statement acts as a double-edged sword. "I'm at vacation cap" signals that I've worked hard and foregone time off in favor of work. i.e. I'm a hard worker. "if I don't take this time off I lose it" signals that I'm not willing to leave anything on the table, and it shows that I value a work-life balance.

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

#123

Post by wan23 »

orev wrote: post #86
dom96 wrote: post #17

> While long hours would be permitted for those interested in working them, crunch would not be made “mandatory.” Yeah, I'm sure that works well. How can you compete with those that do work long hours when it comes time for performance reviews? The fear of losing your job is very real and I'm sure that creates a culture where in effect everyone is working long hours, no matter what the CD Projekt co-founder says.

This is the same problem with companies that have a “no vacation tracking, just take off when you want policy”. It ends up that no one takes vacation for this same reason.

This is definitely something that varies from company to company. I have been at three companies with untracked vacation where people used the policy well.

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

#124

Post by denkmoon »

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

What would that achieve?

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

#125

Post by Dylan16807 »

4cao wrote: post #58
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…

While this comment is problematic because of the entitlement it exudes, it draws attention to two important phenomena: (1) the issue would have likely been avoided if the studio did not set a day-definite release date (announcing it more generally as e.g. Q4 2020 instead); (2) there is a general problem with how game pre-orders work: people put their money down but it isn't really clear what they are getting for it i…

> While this comment is problematic because of the entitlement it exudes

Expecting not to be lied to as a customer is a very justifiable stance.

And it seems pretty clear to me that they met the standards of lying in the more recent announcements. They didn't just make bad predictions early on.

> more generally as e.g. Q4 2020

The first release date was Q2 and the second release date was Q3, so I'm skeptical that would have helped.

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

#126

Post by Dylan16807 »

aaron-santos wrote: post #21
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.

If they don't want to have their labor power exploited, why don't they work somewhere else?

It's very hard to change jobs.

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

#127

Post by Dylan16807 »

nonbirithm wrote: post #55
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.

The people complaining about it being delayed are probably the people least likely to change their minds because of the delays and not buy the game when it comes out. Empty promises about crunch and lost trust won't matter as much to those people when the game comes out. Also, does the general gaming subculture still care about Red Dead Redemption 2's development and the livelihood and mental health costs it caused t…

> No Man's Sky proved that with too much effective advertising you can hype yourself into a corner, not have enough resources to finish the product properly, and guarantee the disappointment of the people expecting too much.

They had plenty of resources, and they did finish it properly once they had enough time. The real problem was declaring the game as 1.0 far too early. The hype made that hurt more but it wasn't the cause of the problems. I mean, it didn't even have a real ending early on, or any multiplayer.

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

#128

Post by ekianjo »

411111111111111 wrote: post #113
ekianjo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The issue is lowish wage

Lowish wage for game developers? I beg your pardon?

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

#129

Post by raxxorrax »

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…

I had a different experience. Worked at a startup, money was tight and the product had to be developed. It was stressful, but it felt great after it was done. Granted, I wouldn't necessarily try it again and not for a large corporation to that level, but I think this is typical for any R&D project, maybe software in particular.

It is just difficult to determine how long things will take in the end. I think it is great they did change the release date and not cut corners.

We did get a lot of free time in exchange after crunch and I think there has to be appreciation. I am sure developers are looking to a relaxed Christmas in the end.

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

#130

Post by musicale »

dathinab wrote: post #59
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…

I did crunch time once. (In my case ironically I was the problem, it was fully unnecessary and no one but me involved). Thinks I learned from it: - It's very daunting. - It's quite bad for your health, especially your mental health. - It's bad for productivity. Which means it's a fatal cycle: you do crunch time => because of stress and exhaustion you are less productive => you need to do even more crunch because you…

Yeah, I don't know why companies do it because it is so counterproductive and damaging: it reduces quality and increases time to completion while harming employee health.

Very brief crunches can maybe push you over a deadline but will (in my experience) result in lower overall productivity per hour (and higher defect rates) for the entire crunch + recovery interval.

Which seems to mean do a two week crunch and then fire your developers, but replacing them is usually more costly than recovery time.

It probably isn't a coincidence that universities often have two week final exam/final project periods followed by two (or more) weeks of vacation.

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