Cyberpunk 2077 devs on progress and working conditions

Youtuber has spoken to several developers who seems split on the state of things.

Recently, beloved developer CD Projekt RED found themselves in the middle of quite the storm amidst allegations of mismanagement and poor working conditions. Furthermore, some rumors surfaced which portrayed the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 as a game in development hell, with no clear cut concept in mind.

Youtube personality Madqueen Show decided to try and speak to some of the developers at CD Projekt RED about the allegations, as well as the current state of their game. She is now ready to show her findings in a new video.

First off, interviews with several, anonymous developers portrayed Cyberpunk 2077 as a project that is "on track", and that is improving every day "both in performance and visuals". That being said, development is being described as "very tough".

In terms of mismanagement, there seems to be around a 50/50 split in opinion between the interviewed staffers, where most of the complains are centered around middle management, poor communication and even competition between various managers.

One developer said:

"When in Bioware they said they had a 3 months' crunch. We laughed. During the Witcher 3, a lot of people crunched for over a year, some of them for 3 years.

"The Witcher 3 development kept getting worse by the month. The morale got very low and everyone ended up complaining during crunch supper. Some of us were still looking forward to being moved to Cyberpunk and having a fresh start with a 'new' project. When we finally started switching to Cyberpunk... things got even wilder, even more chaotic. At that time, almost everybody in my team wanted to leave."

But, not everyone agrees it seems, as another developer praises the studio for its working conditions and ethics.

"In my 10 years of career, I've been in companies that make you do overtime without pay, give you a month's notice to be fired before asking you to do more overtime. That pushed fresh students from school to suicide due to pressure and bullying from their boss. But, of course, you never heard of them, because they're insignificant. CD Projekt Red is in the high tier, my best company in 10 years in the industry in terms of working conditions."

So, it seems that reality is, unsurprisingly, more shades of grey than black and/or white.