Game Discussions Cyberpunk 2077 - official gameplay

We'll have to wait for the Witcher 4 to find out I guess ;)
One of my (kind of foolish and unfounded) hopes is that in Witcher 4, the "Witcher Ciri" ending is canon and we'll be playing as her.

But more probably the next game will be from a completely different era - possibly from the golden era of witchers (100-200 years before Geralt).
We'll see.

Well... hopefully. It's going to be at least another five years, possibly much more and I'm not sure I'm actually going to be alive then. :LOL:
 
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It's fake, of course. Just saying, because I lost all hope in humanity's capacity for humour
 
Meanwhile, there are not-so-stellar-news going out from CDPR.

Worrying times indeed, but not surprising. If the game is finished, but there's still loads of bugs, without a day 1 patch to fix 99% of them they'll get a load of refunds. The developers are being paid for it, and let me tell you, that doesn't always happen. Also a nice 10% bonus of the windfall from the game's release. So, not all bad. 🤷‍♀️
 
Meanwhile, there are not-so-stellar-news going out from CDPR.
What the oft tweeted article doesn't mention is that those extra hours are paid overtime...it also seems to forget that CP2077, more than likely one of the most eagerly anticipated games in the last 5 years is but a mere few weeks from release. I'm not surprised CDPR are crunching the last stretch leading up to it...I suspect the devs over at CDPR aren't too suprised either ;)

All this nonsense started with a tweet from Chad McKinney over at Ci¬G who seems to be on an internet rampage trying to unionise game developers so he can push for higher wages and less hours...maybe he should just change job...or give me his wages and I'll go do it.
 
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Meanwhile, there are not-so-stellar-news going out from CDPR.

I hate this kind of practice.

I've been working in software for 20 years, and the only time I realized that I was expected to work overtime consistently was on my second job and I jumped ship shortly after. Software is an industry with virtually no unemployment and after a few years of good, industry-relevant experience, employers will sing serenades under your bedroom window at night trying to hire you, so I don't understand why so many people still subject themselves to this.

If things are behind schedule, then just re-schedule the release.I don't even know why they have to set release dates with so much time in advance anyway. It's not like they're curing cancer, or scrambling to save some trapped miners below ground or children in a flooded cave, it's just a damn videogame.
 
I hate this kind of practice.

I've been working in software for 20 years, and the only time I realized that I was expected to work overtime consistently was on my second job and I jumped ship shortly after. Software is an industry with virtually no unemployment and after a few years of good, industry-relevant experience, employers will sing serenades under your bedroom window at night trying to hire you, so I don't understand why so many people still subject themselves to this.

If things are behind schedule, then just re-schedule the release.I don't even know why they have to set release dates with so much time in advance anyway. It's not like they're curing cancer, or scrambling to save some trapped miners below ground or children in a flooded cave, it's just a damn videogame.
...that's been pushed back twice already. As for working a 6 day week, yes please...I can't remember the last time I only worked for 6 days in a week.
 
As a software dev who has had to work overtime on more occasions I can count over the years, I'll just say this.

Crunches happen. 🤷‍♀️

You try and avoid them if you can, but that's not always possible, and then the only thing you can hope for is that a) they are relatively short and b) you get paid appropriately for it.

Both are occurring here. It's 6 days a week for 6 weeks, and they're getting paid for those 6 extra days. Then a bonus of 10% of the company's gross earnings in 2020. Given that the game is going to sell massively because of the marketing hype machine that cannot be put back yet again, the developers are going to get a very nice reward for their extra efforts.
 
As a software dev who has had to work overtime on more occasions I can count over the years, I'll just say this.

Crunches happen. 🤷‍♀️

You try and avoid them if you can, but that's not always possible, and then the only thing you can hope for is that a) they are relatively short and b) you get paid appropriately for it.

Both are occurring here. It's 6 days a week for 6 weeks, and they're getting paid for those 6 extra days. Then a bonus of 10% of the company's gross earnings in 2020. Given that the game is going to sell massively because of the marketing hype machine that cannot be put back yet again, the developers are going to get a very nice reward for their extra efforts.
There's some common sense in a nutshell...CDPR is hardly a junior dev sweatshop churning out mobile phone games. For 1% of their gross earnings after CP2077...I'd drive all the way over to Poland with my 40 year old sit-on lawn mower and cut their grass for 10 years.
 
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The developers are being paid for it, and let me tell you, that doesn't always happen.
What the oft tweeted article doesn't mention is that those extra hours are paid overtime...
See I'm being a bit cynical about it, because it's a Polish company and things here can run a bit "wild west style". I've worked in a Polish corporation once (not CDPR), and the bonus plans were structured in a way to... not pay them. They just "accumulated", and then you got mysteriously relocated to another team and the money stayed with the former team before you could benefit from it... That sort of shady practices were common. Overtime wasn't paid or even exchanged for a day off and they made us sign the paper that we need written permission to be on premises after 8h. Of course the deadlines didn't change, and crunch was omnipresent. Yet, we loved the brand. Stupid young naive boys :D

RE: CDPR - If they are coming to work on Saturday they will be paid for that as for a normal day, but our law actually says the employer can simply say "take a day off in exchange". So I'm not entirely sure they will get compensated properly. Lawfully - yes. And then there's law on one side, and "industry practice" on the other. It's completely different mindset than in say, US companies operating in Poland.

All that said (which is speculation, based on some glassdoor reviews of ex employees and 20 years experience in the industry), IDK why the smear campaign tbh. Crunch is present in software projects and it ever will be, because the only "resource" you break in the process are people, and that bad corp I mentioned had a saying that a programmer has a ROI of about one year, after that it's not a loss, it's pure profit. Actual HR data. So, if you hate it or not, crunch will be present. Maybe someone wants the share price to tank a bit before CP release :p
 
compulsory overtime
Then there's something like "voluntary crunch". When I feel I'm close to finishing something, I don't want to drop everything I'm doing just because the clock shows "shift's over". I want to pursue the solution more, mainly because "I'm in the zone" (or flow as some say), and I have this whole mental model built in my head which will be dropped if I stop right now. And then I would need to rebuild this mental state the next day. I like to end work on a milestone of sorts, that I can easily pick it up another day.

No doubt, and they'll be especially keen to avoid refunds due to bugs & Steam's refund policies.
I seriously doubt that I would need to refund my physical copy with a nice steelbook. It's CDPR, they got this. Even if the launch would end rough, they will make it right, I'm sure.
 
As long as the devs have agreed to it, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, it's their choice.

But I don't agree with the widespread notion that crunches simply happen and are something that people just have to accept as "normal". It's only normal because people have been accepting it without questioning for too long, especially junior devs who are starting their careers and are still afraid of not getting another job elsewhere. The overwhelming majority of times, it's not even the devs fault, it's project management issues, ever changing requirements, shifted goal posts, setting dates based on no tangible criteria, etc, yet it's the devs who end up having to work extra for it.

If a company can only survive on constant overtime from their employees, then that company might as well die in a hole and make room in the market for better run companies to take it's place.

Now, none of this likely applies to CDPR, it seems more of an agreed temporary situation where the devs will be very well compensated. I just get a bit riled up with the general glorification of overtime in IT, I think people in the industry have been putting up with it needlessly for far too long.

While I occasionally work a little extra during mostly emergencies (I work on servers and those things need to run 24/7) or overall in exceptional situations, and I do it voluntarily because my company treats me very well and overtime is a rare occurrence, there's just no way I would stay in a company that would require me to work overtime consistently, especially in an industry where after some time you start to consider job invitation emails as spam and there's always greener pastures elsewhere.
 
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Crunch...or compulsory overtime with added hard work is present in farming too. I'm doing it at the moment trying to get the last of my silage in...I'll do it again several times throughout the year. I just wish I got paid for it :)

OK, but you're running your own farm, you probably enjoy tending to it, and all your work on your farm will be for your own benefit. Now imagine you were just an employee on someone else's farm and your boss said:

"Mole HD, we decided to change the current crops again, now instead of just corn we'll need strawberries too, we'll need you to work 3 extra hours a day to change it fast because the season is ending next month. What do you mean you can't plant strawberries in a cornfield, dirt is dirt right? Oh and we already told out customer that we'll have the first strawberries ready in 2 weeks, so if you could get going that would be swell!"
 
...that's been pushed back twice already. As for working a 6 day week, yes please...I can't remember the last time I only worked for 6 days in a week.
Yeah. Plus in every job with deadlines, there will be a crunch time.
When comes to CDPR, it isn't worse than any other company and even the people who complain about it a lot admit that they are paid handsomely for it.
When I was opening the store, I worked 14 hours a day, 7 days a week for five years before I treated myself to a two-day vacation when I could finally hire an employee. How's that for a crunch time. :LOL:

In all seriousness, though. Crunch times are bad, but people comparing it to slavery in Chinese factories are WAY over the line. It's a couple weeks. Everybody can endure crunching for a couple weeks.
 
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