Cyberpunk 2077 Devs Reportedly Required to Crunch to Meet November Release Date

CD Projekt Red is reportedly enacting mandatory six-day workweeks to finish work on Cyberpunk 2077 in time for its November release. The studio previously promised employees that there will be no mandatory crunch to finish the highly-anticipated RPG.In a report published by Bloomberg, CD Projekt Red studio head Adam Badowski sent an email to staff explaining the decision to crunch before the launch of Cyberpunk 2077. Badowski even addresses how the crunch decision reverses earlier promises from the company saying they wouldn’t require it.

“I take it upon myself to receive the full backlash for the decision,” Badowski reportedly wrote in an email. “I know this is in direct opposition to what we’ve said about crunch. It’s also in direct opposition to what we’ve said about crunch. It’s also in direct opposition to what I personally grew to believe a while back — that crunch should never be the answer. But we’ve extended all other possible means of navigating the situation.”

Crunch is a term across a variety of industries where employees are asked to put in extra hours, sometimes days, to complete a project before a deadline. The commitment extends far beyond the typical workday or week, meaning employees typically stay late into the night and weekends to meet strict goals.

CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwiński gave an interview to Kotaku in 2019 saying that it would like CD Projekt to be known as a studio that’s humane to its developers, and discussing its “non-obligatory crunch policy.”

For more on crunch and its impact on game developers, read about the worrying trends in mental health within the games industry.

IGN has reached out to CD Projekt for a comment but has not heard back in time for the publication of this story.

Matt T.M. Kim is a reporter for IGN.