Cyberpunk 2077: Jason Schreier reveals new development information

Game news Cyberpunk 2077: Jason Schreier reveals new development information

If you’ve been following video game news over the past few weeks, you know that Cyberpunk 2077’s launch has been marred by a number of technical issues, especially on PS4 and Xbox One.

Subsequently, many other elements were added to this more than difficult launch: the possibility of being reimbursed, the withdrawal of Cyberpunk 2077 from the PS Store, the filing of a class action, the pressure put by the authorities consumer protection campaign and a public apology from Marcin Iwinski. We suspected that Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier was monitoring the situation closely, and took advantage of his contacts to publish this morning a long survey on the Cyberpunk 2077 development conditions.

The latter offers one long summary on Twitter, and indicates to have been able to interview more than 20 people working or having worked on the title, and highlights an ambition out of control, technical problems, untenable delays and above all, a slogan: “We made The Witcher 3, it’ll work”, which Schreier relates to “BioWare Magic”. In their testimonials, the developers indicate that despite the promises around the fact that the crunch would not be mandatory, many of them felt compelled to work overtime for years. A former audio programmer, Adrian Jakubiak, who left the studio after his marriage said:

There were times when I crunched up to 13 hours a day (…), and I did it five days a week. I have a few friends who have lost their families to this shenanigans.

Some outside veterans would have been shocked to learn that a form of every man for himself was in place at CD Projekt. As an example, Jason Schreier explains that when a developer needed a shader it was created without checking if it had already been done. Regarding the crunch, one developer reportedly told his manager that he didn’t want to work overtime, and that was OK since it had been announced. The latter would have accepted the decision, while adding that, suddenly, colleagues should work more to compensate. On the side of foreign developers, some testimonies highlight a form of sidelining. Some discussions would have taken place before them in Polish, which was prohibited by the regulations of the company.

This feeling, to which we can add the low wages, would have caused a certain number of departures during the development. In this regard, Adrian Jakubiak indicates that he earned $ 400 per month in 2015 when he was a tester, and his salary increased to $ 700 per month when he became a junior programmer in 2018. However, CD Projekt has announced in 2019 that 10% of profits would be shared with the developers, but there is currently no data on this. Announced in 2012, Cyberpunk 2077 is said to have changed shape in the not-so-distant past. On Twitter, Schreier indicates that, until 2016 it was a third person game. Also, the system linked to police forces would have been added at the last moment, and some developers would not have understood why the studio was trying to create an RPG and a GTA at the same time having only a fraction of the strengths that Rockstar has.

Jason Schreier also indicates that the development would, as one might expect, really only started in 2016, once The Witcher 3 chapter was closed. The 2018 demo would have been mostly made up of fake gameplay, and that a lot of time had been lost in its realization. Finally, the developers would openly said it would be impossible to release the title in 2020.

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