Cyberpunk 2077 Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Riddler]

But there's a balance to that and working 100 hour weeks. 100 hour weeks are extreme.

One day has 24 hours. Total. Assuming working 5 days a week in order to get 100 hour weeks you'd need to work 20 hours per day. Each day of the week. This leaves 4 hours per day for everything non-work related. Sleep alone takes 6-8 hours. It doesn't sound extreme. More like insane and illegal.

100h weeks certainly implies that they work on weekends too.

I can also guarantee you that they aren't working actual 100hour weeks. They are probably working a lot of overtime but claiming to work 100 hour weeks is a telltale sign of histrionic whining.

 

[Peachcurl]

One day has 24 hours. Total. Assuming working 5 days a week in order to get 100 hour weeks you'd need to work 20 hours per day. Each day of the week. This leaves 4 hours per day for everything non-work related. Sleep alone takes 6-8 hours. It doesn't sound extreme. More like insane and illegal.

I've known people to work 100h weeks, for a few months at least. And it was legal (despite being in a country with strict limits on work hours) since they were self-employed.
Usually they worked all 7 days, not just 5. And I can see the reasons for doing that: the very same people had to cover months without contracts. Still, very much insane.

What I don't get is how that is legal for regular employees. Are there no kinds of rules on that in Poland, or does noone care?

 

[Serious_Business]

Are there no kinds of rules on that in Poland, or does noone care?

The video game industry isn't exactly socially conscious. The workers don't imagine themselves as workers, they think they're having fun ; most of them are making a lot of money I suppose, and they feel lucky to be in the industry, so the idea of organizing themselves to fight company interests doesn't come easy to them. You could say that this is a symptom of an advanced, abstract economy - it doesn't have a very clear idea of work, production, or even economic reality (perhaps even of reality in general) ; it just "works" as something that is more or less fantasized as automatic and profit-generating. This is something that's evolving right now, in France you got a syndicate going on, because the French know a bit more about fighting authority than the rest of Europe. Fight the man, man. Even if the man has a "cool personality" and likes the same video games that you do ; just punch that fucker right up, toss a cocktail molotov in his car

 

[thesecret1]

What I don't get is how that is legal for regular employees.

Long, drasting overtimes are something that sorta comes with working in the gaming industry. If you can't accept that, don't work in that field.

Speaking from experience, it's not as easy as most people view it. Often, you can't just delay the game – there can be very severe contractual obligations preventing you from doing that, or you know that the cost of the delay would be so massive (not just in development costs, but of course marketing costs if you've already launched a marketing campaign, plus there are certain periods in the year when you want to release a game and when you don't in order to maximize revenue). So you get hard deadlines that just cannot be moved, meaning the game is coming out on that date no matter what. But then the usual happens and the thing is taking longer than planned (something commonplace in software development in general) and you realize "if I release the game in this state, it'll fucking bomb". And you can't afford to let the game bomb – a big budget game tanking can bankrupt a smaller studio, and can slash everyone's salary even with large studios. After all, if the game bombs, the company isn't going to get any income save that from sales of its older games (if it has any, and if people are still buying them, which is not certain at all and drops over time). So what happens is the studio owner or whoever's in charge there calls everyone together and gives a heartfelt talk basically begging everyone to do anything and everything in their power to fix the game up for release. And they do – not only does the success affect their future pay, but they also genuinely want the game to succeed. People who don't care about the game's success usually don't last very long – if they don't put in overtime and leave their work unfinished, there's often nobody available who could do it for them. So they do that once, then are never given important work again, and then are let go since the company literally cannot afford to have such people on-board (at least in the development team. HR, marketing, etc. are a different matter entirely, of course). And that's how you get people working past midnight and sleeping in the office for week or two (more than that tends to lead to burnouts) before release.

 

[Yosharian]

What I don't get is how that is legal for regular employees.

Long, drasting overtimes are something that sorta comes with working in the gaming industry. If you can't accept that, don't work in that field.

Speaking from experience, it's not as easy as most people view it. Often, you can't just delay the game – there can be very severe contractual obligations preventing you from doing that, or you know that the cost of the delay would be so massive (not just in development costs, but of course marketing costs if you've already launched a marketing campaign, plus there are certain periods in the year when you want to release a game and when you don't in order to maximize revenue). So you get hard deadlines that just cannot be moved, meaning the game is coming out on that date no matter what. But then the usual happens and the thing is taking longer than planned (something commonplace in software development in general) and you realize "if I release the game in this state, it'll fucking bomb". And you can't afford to let the game bomb – a big budget game tanking can bankrupt a smaller studio, and can slash everyone's salary even with large studios. After all, if the game bombs, the company isn't going to get any income save that from sales of its older games (if it has any, and if people are still buying them, which is not certain at all and drops over time). So what happens is the studio owner or whoever's in charge there calls everyone together and gives a heartfelt talk basically begging everyone to do anything and everything in their power to fix the game up for release. And they do – not only does the success affect their future pay, but they also genuinely want the game to succeed. People who don't care about the game's success usually don't last very long – if they don't put in overtime and leave their work unfinished, there's often nobody available who could do it for them. So they do that once, then are never given important work again, and then are let go since the company literally cannot afford to have such people on-board (at least in the development team. HR, marketing, etc. are a different matter entirely, of course). And that's how you get people working past midnight and sleeping in the office for week or two (more than that tends to lead to burnouts) before release.

A week or two before release is understandable, 8+ months of that shit is beyond a fucking joke and is completely unethical

 

[Harthwain]

What I don't get is how that is legal for regular employees. Are there no kinds of rules on that in Poland, or does noone care?

Technically there are limits.

Your weekly work time shouldn't be above 48 hours on average (INCLUDING your overtime hours!). You're also limited to 150 hours of overtime per year.

 

[Dodo1610]

Crunch is sadly unavoidable in this industry but then you have companies like CDPR where crunch is almost the standard all year round. And the crunch here is purely their fault, this game is in development for 7 years and at least three of them were wasted, then they made these obviously fake demos for the last two e3s to create hype( If they were real they would have someone play them) Which meant again months wasted.

 

[hivemind]

poles lie and cheat

colour me shocked

 

[RNGsus]

What I don't get is how that is legal for regular employees.

Long, drasting overtimes are something that sorta comes with working in the gaming industry. If you can't accept that, don't work in that field.

Speaking from experience, it's not as easy as most people view it. Often, you can't just delay the game – there can be very severe contractual obligations preventing you from doing that, or you know that the cost of the delay would be so massive (not just in development costs, but of course marketing costs if you've already launched a marketing campaign, plus there are certain periods in the year when you want to release a game and when you don't in order to maximize revenue). So you get hard deadlines that just cannot be moved, meaning the game is coming out on that date no matter what. But then the usual happens and the thing is taking longer than planned (something commonplace in software development in general) and you realize "if I release the game in this state, it'll fucking bomb". And you can't afford to let the game bomb – a big budget game tanking can bankrupt a smaller studio, and can slash everyone's salary even with large studios. After all, if the game bombs, the company isn't going to get any income save that from sales of its older games (if it has any, and if people are still buying them, which is not certain at all and drops over time). So what happens is the studio owner or whoever's in charge there calls everyone together and gives a heartfelt talk basically begging everyone to do anything and everything in their power to fix the game up for release. And they do – not only does the success affect their future pay, but they also genuinely want the game to succeed. People who don't care about the game's success usually don't last very long – if they don't put in overtime and leave their work unfinished, there's often nobody available who could do it for them. So they do that once, then are never given important work again, and then are let go since the company literally cannot afford to have such people on-board (at least in the development team. HR, marketing, etc. are a different matter entirely, of course). And that's how you get people working past midnight and sleeping in the office for week or two (more than that tends to lead to burnouts) before release.

A week or two before release is understandable, 8+ months of that shit is beyond a fucking joke and is completely unethical

Security and EMT industries are full of mandatory overtime. You will stay over to cover this shift or partial shift, or you can hand in your shit right now, and you won't get unemployment either, because you are quitting. Did we schedule you for this day and this shift? You made plans? lol Get in here or look for another job.

 

[Machocruz]

All for some pop culture detritus that no one will care about 10 years from now.

 

[taxalot]

I should probably give a shit about crunch but I really don't.

Do I checkbox everything I consume, from soap to pasta has been produced with fair wages or working hours ?

I don't. Why would the games I pirate be different ?

 

[Egosphere]

It's going to be first person Witcher 3 with guns, that's what people need to expect from this. And Witcher 3 was hardly a RPG.

Well, that's the next rpgcodex goty award sorted out then

 

[RNGsus]

All for some pop culture detritus that no one will care about 10 years from now.

They're also about 10 years too late for the neoretro fad.

 

[Trashos]

I can also guarantee you that they aren't working actual 100hour weeks. They are probably working a lot of overtime but claiming to work 100 hour weeks is a telltale sign of histrionic whining.

I've known people to work 100h weeks, for a few months at least. And it was legal (despite being in a country with strict limits on work hours) since they were self-employed.
Usually they worked all 7 days, not just 5. And I can see the reasons for doing that: the very same people had to cover months without contracts. Still, very much insane.

I did 70-90hrs until my mid-thirties, and I have to say that 100h weeks does sound insane if it is for more than a couple of months. I am not someone who blames companies for making the workers work too much in general, I just do not believe that the human brain can take 100h weeks for extended periods of time.

(I am talking about intense mental work, right? Not chilling at a workplace.)

 

[retinoid]

It's obvious that the success and expectations people have following Witcher 3's release severely affected the development goals and ambition of CP2077 and led to the soft reboot a few years ago. On the one hand, a business has a duty to satisfy its investors and shareholders so them "streamlining" the game or whatever you want to call it makes perfect sense. People love GTA V, people loved Witcher 3. People love...Keanu? CHA CHING

But on the other hand, reading the original design goals from back in 2012 is heartbreaking. CDPR would be the last people you'd expect to compromise their vision so heavily. I don't doubt the production values will be absolutely insane, but as a game I'm expecting about as much depth as a paddling pool. Those code-monkey employees crunching away for what is essentially a truncated product that will inevitably sell millions but will never see any of the benefits for themselves should probably just fuck off out of there. We all know most of them will do it in 5 months anyway. I would just use those 5 months to search for another job with some benefits. If you're gonna be in a job that requires some heavy crunching, at least make sure you're getting something in return to soften the blow. I don't know what the laws are like Poland, but in other EU countries there are safeguards in place for situations like this for tech jobs.

 

[hivemind]

what did theu compromise upon??

 

[retinoid]

what did theu compromise upon??

Making a good game that doesn't look like downtown LA populated with people from downtown San Francisco

 

[hivemind]

profs

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

poles lie and cheat

colour me shocked

I worked at Walmart with a manager who was half Italian, half Pole. Everyone called her the 'angry idiot.'

 

[hivemind]

this is why race mixing was forbidden by the pope in the pre modern world

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

Race is a social construct. DERP DERP. 10-4, Princess.

 

[hivemind]

every single categorisation of anything is a social construct

 

[retinoid]

My shit is a social construct

 

[santino27]

I can also guarantee you that they aren't working actual 100hour weeks. They are probably working a lot of overtime but claiming to work 100 hour weeks is a telltale sign of histrionic whining.

I've known people to work 100h weeks, for a few months at least. And it was legal (despite being in a country with strict limits on work hours) since they were self-employed.
Usually they worked all 7 days, not just 5. And I can see the reasons for doing that: the very same people had to cover months without contracts. Still, very much insane.

I did 70-90hrs until my mid-thirties, and I have to say that 100h weeks does sound insane if it is for more than a couple of months. I am not someone who blames companies for making the workers work too much in general, I just do not believe that the human brain can take 100h weeks for extended periods of time.

(I am talking about intense mental work, right? Not chilling at a workplace.)

It was far from a scientific study, but we found the quality difference in code delivered in 50 hour work weeks vs. 70 hour work weeks was substantial, (and not in favor of the longer work week).

 

[Lyric Suite]

My shit is a social construct

You would know all about poop: