 well folks i'm here again to talk about crunch at cd project red and i know i can already feel the dislikes coming last time i talked about this people really really did not like my video it's at like a sixty nine percent like the dislike ratio which is really really bad for my channel as you can see here i honestly uh... deal don't think that people understood the gravity of the situation at cd project red as excuses were coming up uh... left and right because who cares about crunch what we call a crunch let's just call it what it is it's overtime oh no they have mandatory overtime all of us deal with mandatory overtime right i have overtime that i do voluntarily sometimes of my youtube channel uh... there are people that are in a lot of different career fields warehousing uh... you know truck driving that are forced into mandatory overtime all the time and because of coven nineteen mandatory o t has been just a super normal thing here in twenty twenty so who cares they're forcing some mandatory overtime for a few months whatever who cares and the reports are coming from you know a bunch of different uh... you know industry people while in terms of uh... reporters it's not coming from actual devs why aren't the actual devs speaking out if it's so terrible after all the labor laws out where cd project red is located all they added an extra day on weekends you know mandatory or whatever uh... well here's the thing that means it only work forty eight hours because according to the labor laws they can only work forty eight hours a week in that country that is the law so why are we complaining most of us work over forty eight hours well folks we now have an actual developer who finally broke silence finally came out and has been confirmed by independent uh... people including yes station schreyer i know some of you guys don't like him uh... to be an actual developer at cd project right we don't know who he is and i hope he doesn't get discovered and fired for coming out about this but holy crap guys this mandatory o t thing that's just what they know is publicly uh... they've been doing forced o t for two years and uh... you thought forty eight hours was bad try a hundred and twelve per week but before we get into this there are a couple giveaways going on one is for nintendo switch a playstation five and an xbox series x the others for two copies of pick me three deluxe head on in the description if i don't enter you can like this video uh... subscribe to the channel that bell icon leave a comment all that jazz run a road to a hundred thousand subscribers also be sure to go check out our twitch channel where we are doing all of our live streams moving forward we already will probably have another one coming up later today or if not tomorrow but they let's get into the story this is coming right off a reddit so this is coming from far transportation three three six that is the user name of this person on reddit and it says cd project developer here not only this conversation never happened and this is in response to talking about you know conversations you know how cd project is publicly saying oh we've had open conversations with our developers not only this conversation has never happened but this is just last in a long list of very toxic behavior from the upper management toward towards us developers first of all i can confirm this conversation talking to developers for okay with crunch never happened if anything the developers have been crunching no stop since may of twenty nineteen where the management was like oh shit we need to make the game we must hurry mind that we were barely out of alpha at that point and even though most developers pointed out that it was impossible to do the whole game from scratch essentially in one year if anything people have been dreading the inevitable two year death march since long before the crunch started because they know it's just how cd project rolls dick around in pre-production for ages and then rush everyone and work devs to the bone to make up for the time lost and none of them was looking forward to it we did ask what's the plan if we can't deliver in the set deadline and up until december the answer for management was we have to there is no plan b so here you go first year of crunch there of course first a two month delay and then another six months of delay and to give a picture of how low the level of communication between the management and developers were we found out both times on twitter and other social media that the game was being delayed with a mail from adam one of the directors of the game following a few hours later same happened with the gold release and any other announcement made since june of twenty nineteen people get riled up right now about crunch but just so you know many people have been spending the weekends in the office and doing 16 hours per day since june of 2019 some departments even as far as a year earlier so some since june of 2018 have been doing 16 hour days and weekends every time this was addressed you get the usual copy pasted spiel about we are fueled by passion we are rebels this is not for everyone and other such copy paste slogans which was a cool way to say we have no idea what we are doing but we have infinite cash and we can fix everything with more crunch conversations end up mostly like this the management saying that everything is great and cool and we have to believe in the project our questions and doubts being brushed aside so what we learned from this is just eye-opening and it's something that's been reported but people are just ignoring the actual ground level developers that are doing a majority of the programming have no freaking clue no clue what decisions are being made at the company because there is a hierarchy you have your producers and your project leads your developers and then you have management and from management to the actual developers because the managers generally aren't the ones doing the actual development they're the ones overseeing other people doing the development are the ones that are approving things like oh yeah we're good with the delay oh yeah we crunch that's cool without even talking to their own employees that they're managing they make these decisions without talking to the actual people on the ground level making the game think about this we learned that some people have been working all weekends and 16 hour days since June of 2018 with all developers doing it since June of 2019 think about what we learned here oh but they just recently announced mandatory crunch they've been doing mandatory crunch for two years they just didn't announce it publicly when they talked last year to Jason Schreier and others and said we are not going to have crunch with this game ironically they were already having crunch they were already doing 16 hour days and they just thought they just hoped that not a single developer would speak up because nobody wants to lose their job and yes it's true CD Projekt Red does reportedly according to developers compensate very very well for this extra time that you're working for this more than two times I mean we're not even talking double time it's more than that because they're working weekends the developers have not had a day off while working at CD Projekt Red since June of 2019 they haven't had one day off one day not even one day not holidays nothing they haven't had a single day off 16 hour work days I'm sorry folks if you're gonna sit here and tell me this is okay because all of us work overtime no 116 hours zero days off for two to three years is unacceptable I don't care what profession it is I'm sorry I can't sit here and take this anymore the bullshit the excuses feel me oh it's not CD Projekt Red's fault it has to do with the investors and them doing all these forced timelines and this is bullshit this person just said that CD Projekt Red does this with every single game the Witcher 1, Witcher 2, Witcher 3 they do this every single time if people ignore these stories every single time because they think it's just oh people are just complaining look how good they have it because they dick around in pre-production they could have got more work done in pre-production but that's not how CD Projekt Red rolls CD Projekt Red waste a ton of developer time actual regular working time dicking around instead of properly managing the productions of their game and then they force 90% of the actual making of the game to happen in the final two years this game has been in development for I believe six years now they've been working on it for six years four of those years they barely got anything done they dicked around and then they make up for it on the back end by forcing 112 hour work weeks this is insane guys I'm sorry you can't be okay with this I don't care how much OT you work at your job I don't care if you push 80 hour weeks at your job right you're working 16 hour days right I don't care you haven't had a day off in three years I don't give a shit you ain't working 112 hours if you are someone out there that's working 112 plus hours without a single day off for two years go ahead and tell me I'm overreacting and yes there's gonna be some developers that don't care about this they don't care that their life is literally just work literally it's work and sleep work and sleep I mean yeah they have some food in there somewhere it's work and sleep there is like why do you think a public email went out like a private email that leaked anyways apologizing to developers knowing that CD Projekt Red telling developers we're sorry you haven't been able to spend any time with your family any time this was sent out summer this was sent out last summer a private email leaked out from a developer showing that CD Projekt Red's management was apologizing to their employees for not getting to spend any time with their family any we're not just talking about oh you know you can't take vacations or oh you can't do this or oh you had to miss your son's birthday game you couldn't see your family imagine for two years if you are married and have a child you can't see your family because you need to be dedicated to the game because we're fueled by passion because we are rebels and this job isn't for everyone this is the crap we're talking about so when I brought up this initial story and everyone was trying to make excuses for CD Projekt Red look at the labor laws look at the labor law oh it's just one extra day on the weekend look at the labor laws they can't work more than 48 hours why are we bitching about overtime this is insane this is unhealthy mentally unhealthy physically this is not what people signed up for and I got to give credit to Cory Cory Bohm one of our regulars he's he's a developer of sorts doesn't make video games into programming and all that I've had many conversations with him about workplace environment stuff privately he responded to my tweet about this and he said the big takeaway is that so many young kids young kids a lot of you guys out there young kids dream of making a career in video games being a video game developer you know an art designer etc and they know they can burn through people that are dreaming about this at crazy rates as the next group is already lined up to take their place so don't conform on overtime and crunch you just get shown out faster so what they're basically what the takeaway here is is that hey they know they can get away with this because you're going to make a shitload of money making this game in the final two years and you're going to be burned the fuck out you're not going to want to do it anymore you might lose your wife you might lose your kids but hey I made a shitload of money over two years that's great and now I quit because I don't want to keep living my life this way that's okay we have a whole new era in that time span of fresh people out of college fresh developers to come in and take your place and the cycle begins anew and CD Projekt Red has been doing this with every game they have made this is their development cycle this is not an investor issue this is not a oh the people feeding them money are no CD Projekt Red basically the guys said it's like they have infinite money they could do whatever the fuck they want and here they have no plan B they dick around and don't get as much done in four years as they should oh that's on the developers no it's on management it's on management for miss managing the project you can't put it on the ground level grunt employees when they're pulling off basically creating maybe the greatest game ever made in a two year span when they've had six years this development could have been spread out it could have been spread out over six years and it would have been cheaper to do because they could have got more work done during pre-production than they actually did but that's not how CD Projekt Red works they're completely mismanaged people need to stop giving this company an excuse because they make amazing video games that's what it is these same excuses exist when Rockstar does 100 plus hour work weeks oh that's Rockstar though who cares everyone knows that they sign up for Rockstar no they don't no they don't because they buy into the people saying oh it's not really that bad it can't be that bad if it was that bad there'd be lawsuits guys they're not just working double the legally allowed work time in that given country they're working more than double almost double double and a half two and a half times more it's insane it's absolutely insane I feel bad for every CD Projekt Red employee that isn't a manager since this happens because I'm mismanagement I might feel bad for the managers why feel bad for the people that create this problem I feel bad for the people who actually are making the game the ones that never get credit their names sometimes don't even appear in the credits the people that do the real work I am Nathan Robeljance from Nintendo Prime thanks for tuning in I'll catch you in the next video