'Cyberpunk 2077' developer orders employees to work six days a week ahead of launch

Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red reportedly ordered its employees to work six days a week in order to finish its highly-awaited game ahead of its Nov. 19 release date.

According to a Bloomberg report, CD Projekt Red studio head Adam Badowski informed its employees in an email that six-day work weeks will be mandatory leading up to the game’s release date. The order is contrary to the company’s previous statement that it will not require its employees to render extra hours on the project.

“I take it upon myself to receive the full backlash for the decision,” Badowski wrote. “I know this is in direct opposition to what we’ve said about crunch. It’s also in direct opposition to what I personally grew to believe a while back – that crunch should never be the answer. But we’ve extended all other possible means of navigating the situation.”

The media outfit also reported that a CD Projekt Red employee said that some staff had already been working nights and weekends “for more than a year.”

CD Projekt Red’s upcoming open-world action-RPG starring Keanu Reeves was supposed to hit shelves on Sept. 17 but was pushed back to November in order to fix some bugs ang glitches.

An important development update pic.twitter.com/uFGrt9Tqpi

— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) June 18, 2020

“Cyberpunk 2077 is finished both content and gameplay-wise. The quests, the cuscenes, the skills and items: all the adventures Night City has to offer – it’s all there,” the Polish studio wrote. “But with such an abundance of content and complex systems interweaving with each other, we need to properly go though everything, balance game mechanics and fix a lot of bugs.”