Well, at least it's not a rushed rehash of what was already done. That said, hopefully when it's finished it'll be fun. I think there is more hope for this single player project than the star citizen multiplayer universe (still so much to get done there - mostly issues unique to massive multiplayer games holding that one back - here's hoping all of it becomes reality). If nothing else the tech progress has been interesting to watch over the years.
Just fund great games and empower game devs. I don't care about flashy gimmicks. If they have a great new idea, awesome but other wise they absolutely should not just make changes for the sake of making changes.
@yankeeallstars: It's a two way street and we as the public do not have enough information to know if the employee's gave poor estimates in how long it would take to complete tasks, slacked off because they're all working from home, ran into issues that they just couldn't anticipate, or if it was just a really poorly managed project.
Perhaps it's a lesson in just never tell the public what you're going to try to do/avoid.
Blanket statements like, "CDPR is terrible because they are requiring OT" are silly. These employees aren't overworked and underpaid. They're working 6 extra days on one of the best development teams out there.
Shit happens, things change, we adapt.
If a companies biggest problem is that they required 6 days of OT in 5 years then they're really doing well. If people want to see a poorly managed project, they should look at Anthem or Fallout 76.
A hard working person is going to adapt to change. Some people choose to complain about having to do stuff. Some people choose to get shit done. They're usually not the same people.
The company can always discuss it with their employees, identify where they went wrong, and try to do better on the next project. They still might fall short but a company is no better than its employees and needing OT is something that's caused by all of them.
I do not know what's written in the employee's hiring documents but I doubt it says there will be no OT. I also don't know what CDPR said to its employees internally. All I know is what CDPR said to us which in business is in no way binding internally and any employee that expects something binding without having it in a contract is fooling themselves and should consider this a learning lesson.
@yankeeallstars: Setting a goal of not working OT and working towards that end is still admirable. It's not a 'big promise broken' to say that you do not plan on having to work OT, striving for that goal, and falling short. It's just a reality of any business that exists. Maybe 5% of appdev projects finish on time without any OT because unexpected delays happen constantly. Most of the time the developers are setting the timelines of how long it takes to finish a feature and unexpected things get in the way and cause them to fall behind on their own goals. At some point the product has to release, this is CDPRs hard line in the sand and they want a polished product. It's an extremely difficult goal to achieve and the fact that they only have 6 days of OT out of 5+ years of dev work is fantastic.
Hard work pays. This isn't some unreasonable extended 6-7 day a week grind over 5 years. It's 6 days of OT at the end of the project to hopefully take it into A+/S tier status. It's extra money before the holidays for the employees. And like I said before, 10% of the profit goes back to the employees so there is every incentive for the entire company to put out an S tier polished product.
What benefits did they lie about? To be clear, avoiding OT isn't a benefit, it's a goal. OT is always a possibility, regardless of the goal to avoid it.
If they don't pay their employees, that's a different discussion, since that's not true or happening lets stick to the topic at hand.
@dirtyrug: I agree. I was taught that hard work pays and if it doesn't you find somewhere else to work hard.
I really don't understand the attitude that short term overtime to polish a product (which in turn means success for you and your co-workers) is bad.
These guys still get to see their families and take vacations. It's literally 6 days and it's before the holiday so they can afford to give more during the holidays. Win-win in my eyes.
As for the change from management, at least they strived for that no crunch perfection. I've personally only had maybe 1 or 2 out 20+ projects avoid OT. It's just an extremely difficult thing to do. Even the best plans go sideways from unexpected complications or issues. Developers are always asked for how long it'll take to complete something and often they give reasonable dates but something comes up that just could not be anticipated so the timeline is thrown off. At some point the project has to end and OT to polish happens.
@yankeeallstars: Doing everything you can to avoid crunch doesn't make you a bad company. It highlights how difficult it is to succeed in that endeavor.
The devs are being well compensated for their 6 days of OT AND they'll receive 10% of the 2020 profits the company makes. That hardly makes the company 'bad.'
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