Jason Slama, the new game director for the upcoming Witcher game, has promised that there will be no crunch at the tail-end of the game’s development. As the prior director for Gwent: The Witcher Card Game and a UI programmer, The Witcher 4 director is confident that he can prevent crunch. However, that’s a very high bar to set given CD Projekt Red’s notorious crunch periods for past titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3.
How CD Projekt Red’s past history leads to doubts about The Witcher 4 crunch
After The Witcher 4 was revealed as a teaser image, Slama said via tweet that he has already been “working to ensure the success of the next big AAA The Witcher game as its Game Director.” However, one user pointed out in a quote-reply the past history of CD Projekt RED, implicating Slama for forgetting to mention “the sign on bonus of horrible crunch and being treated like a dog.” To that, Slama had a short and sweet response: “Never on my watch!”
The user replied back, doubting Slama’s statement, and it’s not without cause. Indeed, CD Projekt Red doesn’t have a strong track record when it comes to crunch periods in development.
Despite Adam Badowski, the developer’s head of studio, promising that there would not be a crunch period for Cyberpunk 2077, it was inevitably done anyway. Within the last two months of the game’s development before release, Badowski announced a studio-wide mandatory crunch — specifically, six-day work weeks and many hours of overtime — which was “one of the hardest decisions” he’s had to make.
This came after allegations in 2014 from anonymous employees that The Witcher 3 team had been crunching for a year before the release of that game too.
Even with delays to The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, crunch time for both games seem to be a part of the process. Perhaps CD Projekt Red, with the help of Jason Slama, can ensure that The Witcher 4’s development will be different.
In other news, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed has been announced as a 4v1 multiplayer title, and Gran Turismo 7 fans are resisting the game’s microtransactions by using a credit-farming script.
