Monday, October 5th 2020
Cyberpunk 2077 Has Gone Gold, November 17 Launch Almost a Given
CD Projekt Red announced that Cyberpunk 2077, the year's most anticipated game has gone Gold, meaning that its release-to-market version is ready, which it can pass on to its distributors. "See you in Night City on November 19th!," reads the CDPR tweet announcing the Gold status. The game had seen a series of launch delays in its nearly decade-long development cycle. Cyberpunk is an open-world RPG, not much unlike GTA. The game is based on a fictional city along the US west coast called Night City, set in the year 2077, when technology is a force of nature. Ahead of its launch, a user on Resetera forums leaked a map of Night City, find it below.
Sources:
CD Projekt Red (Twitter), Resetera Forums, via HotHardware
39 Comments on Cyberpunk 2077 Has Gone Gold, November 17 Launch Almost a Given
Of course, the optimist is all like "Good on CDPR, taking the time to get it right!" And then there's this miserable jackass with a golden apple on the other side, jeering "Yeah, but shouldn't that have already been the case? Why now? Did anybody expect them to leave a lot of bugs?"
This one here, I'm looking forward to it, but not entirely there. I guess I want to see how it is technically and gameplay wise compared to their prior masterpiece. A repeat on that scale is tough for any studio to do, much less twice consecutively.
Still, I think all this reporting about crunch is overblown. People putting in extra work, and being rewarded for it? The horror.
Is that true here? Only the employees really know. CDPR is not squeaky clean in this area, not at all. So it's an issue.
Beyond that... in this case, they made it a point to take an absolute stance on crunching. When pressed they decided to carry a torch for the well-being of their devs. So in a sense they made liars out of themselves on that. When you consider CDPR's image now, and past accounts of what people working on TW3 went through, it's not hard to imagine where the scrutiny comes from. Part of the hype with CDPR is that most of the time, they practice what they preach. People hold them to a higher standard. And they have settled into that role. This comes with the territory. People wouldn't be scrutinizing them if they hadn't made a thing out of it. Why go there if you're not prepared to back it up? If you make those claims, you want to be absolutely sure you stick by them. The reaction isn't really surprising. And they had to know that too. They know how the gaming community is. Which makes me think it hasn't been very smooth sailing this past year. Whether they screwed up and set themselves back or simply had bad luck doesn't change the outcome.
Personally I just find it interesting that they made it known that they didn't need to do it... that they had planned it out so that it wouldn't have to be that way. Which to me doesn't trigger moral alarms so much as it makes me wonder how the management is. To me, sudden crunches come down to bad management, staffing issues, and goals. When you advertise your goals openly, talk about those things you won't do, push back those goals, AND do the things you were confident wouldn't be needed, I can't help but wonder what's going wrong there. Especially with a title that's this big.
Besides, at the risk of sounding like a bitter millennial, it's not like game development is the one place where people sometimes have to put in extra hours. Across many industries it's just the reality of doing business.
I have a feeling game development in particular is kept to a different standard due to reporting in media, catered to the interests and viewpoints of as you put it 'recent generations'. This in turn becomes a PR issue, where companies are expected to pretend it is a real burning problem because game journalism has manufactured this kind of perception...Software development is notoriously complex, interleaved and hard to plan for so it does not come as a surprise to me. Very few large projects complete on time and budget - there are just too many variables to account for. The work also does not easily scale, see The Mythical Man-Month.
Its no secret that CDPR's project management is an ongoing process of learning and not learning certain lessons. Above all, pressure and stress levels are pretty high, up to and including devs leaving the studio shortly after, for example TW3 was released. They're definitely learning and not being soft about it, there is little question about it. How that relates to the product itself? Not at all. Can work out in a hundred different ways and until you can look into people's heads, your guess is as good as mine really.
What matters about project management is the results. The fact they postpone it to deliver quality, is always better than not postponing it to not deliver the quality that was intended. The fact its Gold now, means the project is moving towards finalization. I only see positives.
Can't find the original interview within 10 seconds, but here is a ripoff
and yes i did get more money for it so it was a half fair deal.
so many other jobs where this is normal practice- here it is totally blown out of proportions.
i think wizzard too knows cruchtime and many others who post here.
Nearly all works that are in the market can require you to do some overtime/crunch. Even more now that we are in a crisis period and when work arrive you don't want to let it slip away.
The directors at CDprojectRed have valued that there is a need to work one day more every week until day 1?
Perfect. More bug-hunting and a more polished game for us. And more money for all the workers coinvolted.
I think that at this point, the creative process is nearly finished. You don't add entire quest/maps/areas/ecc.. into the game with so little time left.
I work in the enginering field, crunch time/overtime is nearly the standard every time a big project/work have to be done in time. At least here in italy, in the civil enginerring, there is so much competition..
It's not the end of the world.
Another thing is, when the crunch /overtime is the norm inside the workplace. That is a sign of bad resource/work management. Or straight up malice, to milk the underlings. I don't thnk that this is the case.
It's up to PM's to schedule the work so that it gets completed on time, without any need for excessive overtime or crunch. You've got 20 working days in a month. If magically you have to make it 24 then it's not because you're employees are slacking, it's because management wasn't doing it's work and only now they've faced the reality of incoming deadlines.
CDPR has a history of extensive crunch periods being forced upon its workforce. If it wasn't like that in the past its CEO wouldn't have made his promise (which he now has broken) when it came to CP2077.
We're not talking about your mom and pop's small business, we're talking about a company that's traded on stock exchange and has to meet their goals for quarter/fiscal year.
Of course some will leave because of burnout (or boredom). I'm just saying, employees leaving after the job is done is not an indicator of anything.
I have high hopes for this, even if, in the good tradition of the first Witcher games, it will need an "enhanced edition" further down the road ;)
Also, like it was stated, if we talk About 6 to 20 days of "over time" in a year (or here compared to the complete dev-cycle) it's not really that big of a deal AND decently compensated (yes, they could get an extra Bonus and would deserve it, but even the "by law" compensation is already decent :) )yeah. Just go and ask BMW production employees, when the factories re-opened and BMW went in with tripple-shifts (3 shifts per day, running production for 21 Hours per day with overlap of Crews / breaks calculated in) on 6 days of the week for 4+ weeks.
dunno when or if they stopped it already, but they did it for at least a month and were Talking About physically demanding Labor. Yes, using your brain also drains your Energy and will wreck you similarly, but it's still different.
And no one would complain About that - they Need to catch up with lost production and People are waiting for their cars of Course. Also, it's not hyped so much as in SW dev, where the average dev-job Pays two to three times what a production/manufacturing Job Pays .... *sigh*. It's … different. Because our interests are different. As is our Focus.
So I don't say it's a good Thing and crunch should be mandatory Always.... I just wanted to Point out that everyone just uses it or brings it up when it's conveneient but ignores it everywhere else where it's a Thing for a much longer time and in completely different propotions...