A former employee of the Polish developer has spoken up about excessive crunch and miniscule pay during the development of The Witcher 3.
Crunch culture is at CD Projekt Red. With each delay to their upcoming Cyberpunk 2077, the hellish development pr⛦ocess stretches out even longer for the team. And unf꧅ortunately, that death march has continued with yesterday's announcement that the long-gestating game has been delayed yet again.
However, as we've discovered in the past year, implementing crunch is something that CDPR hasn't shied away from for quite a while. The practice, which the company's co-founder isn't "humane," stretches back to 2015's hit The Witcher 3, which was allegedly made under s♓imilar circumstances.
On Tuesday, World of Darkness Brand Community Ma🐠nager Martyna ✅Zych took to Twitter to talk about her experience as a character animator on the game.
So can I now share that i earned $430 monthly for full time work on facial animations on That Great Game 3 in That Great Company That Totally Treats Theirꦉ Passionately Crunching Employees FairlyToo soon? Ok
— Ghoulstar (@outstarwalker)
Zych goes on to push against the idea of "passion-based jobs" necessitating crunch, insisting that these should be held to the 𓄧standards of other ꦜfields. that the money she made was well below her monthly rent, and is thankful that a better job soon thereafter - also that unionizing has helped matters.
While it's a relief that Zych has since moved onto better things, it's troubling that things got th💟is dire during The Witcher 3's development cycle. It's hard not to wonder if these wages were higher or lower for certain people, and what the working conditions we🍎re like among the rest of the staff.
But it's not a bold stance, in my mind, to say that any game development process ෴like this is unacceptable. Ultimately, these are just games - entertainment that distracts us from our day-to-day lives. And no piece of entertainment, really, is worth this much human suffering.
