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CD Projekt's Kiciński insists Cyberpunk 2077 crunch was "not that bad"

CD Projekt's Kiciński insists Cyberpunk 2077 crunch was "not that bad"

One of the CEOs of Polish games firm CD Projekt Adam Kiciński (pictured) has said that crunch for the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 is not as bad as has been made out.

Speaking to investors in the wake of the title's three-week delay, the exec said that some parts of the development team has been working longer hours in order to finish the eagerly-anticipated sci-ti RPG, but that it that "a large part" of the studio wasn't as their tasks had been finished.

This follows a report that CD Projekt had mandated a six-day workweek in order to finish Cyberpunk 2077 in September. In 2019, the studio said that it wanted to finish the game without "mandatory" crunch.

"Regarding crunch; actually, it’s not that bad – and never was," Kiciński told investors.

"Of course it’s a story that has been picked up by the media, and some people have been crunching heavily, but a large part of the team is not crunching at all since they have finished their work; it’s mostly about Q&A and engineers, programmers –but it’s not that heavy; of course, it will be extended a bit, but we have feedback from the team; they’re happy about the extra three weeks, so we don’t see any threats regarding crunch."

Cyberpunk 2077 is launching on December 10th following a three-week delay from its previous release date in November. The title was initially set for an April roll out, before being bumped until September and then being moved by two months.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.