Footage of Cyberpunk 2077 made it clear that the project is incredibly huge, and the question here is whether workers at CD Projekt Red have time for their personal lives. 

Footage of Cyberpunk 2077 made it clear that the project is incredibly huge, and the question here is whether workers at CD Projekt Red have time for their personal lives.  The developer was previously accused of crunch, but a recent Kotaku article states that studio management decided to improve their work-life balance, even if crunch can still be necessary.

“We’re known—let me be humble for a moment here—we are known for treating gamers with respect,” stated Marcin Iwiński, the company’s co-founder. “This is what we’ve been working hard toward. And I actually would like for us to also be known for treating developers with respect.”

The management team set up a “non-obligatory crunch policy”, meaning that even when they are asked to work on nights and weekends, it’s not “mandatory.”

“We’ve been working toward it for some time already,” Iwiński added. “We’ve been communicating clearly to people that of course there are certain moments where we need to work harder—like I think the E3 demo is a pretty good example—but we want to be more humane and treat people with respect. If they need to take time off, they can take time off. Nobody will be frowned upon if this will be requested.”

They also hope that this public statement would make developers feel more comfortable telling that they need time off.

It also appears that as of this moment, CD Projekt Red’s team have to limit their vacation to specific times in 2019. The team is trying to organize the vacations better, but the management states that on certain occasions there are certain rules, and they have some special rules for the last year of the development.

Make sure to get more details on their work in an article by Kotaku.