Cyberpunk 2077’s controversial launch destroyed team morale

CD Projekt Red's engineering director Col Walder has shared details on the consequences of Cyberpunk 2077's controversial launch in 2020. The team's morale 'took a significant hit', but the studio has drastically improved the way they work in the years since.

Walder, a video game industry veteran of 15 years, discussed in an interview with invenglobal how leadership has been approached over the years, the impact of remote work, and the atmosphere in CD Projekt Red before and after Cyberpunk 2077's launch.

Developers were reportedly subjected to gruelling work hours during development, with the end result being mixed; last-gen consoles could barely run the game, and Walder reflected on both with a focus on doing better going forward.

“Hindsight is always better for being able to say, ‘Okay, this went wrong because of XYZ, so let's make some changes.’” the engineering director said.

“For our next project, Polaris, we're already running our demos and internal reviews on the console from the very beginning. This is a step we only took later in Cyberpunk's development.”

“You've got to demonstrate commitment. For instance, when a deadline is looming, instead of reverting to crunch, we might say, ‘Let's adjust the schedule,’ or, ‘Let's approach this differently.’ Once this becomes a repeated behaviour - once the team sees a genuine effort to prevent crunch - that's when trust and morale start to rebuild. People need to see it to believe it.”

Walder later goes on to discuss the application of AI in game development and actors' performances. It's “unlikely to replace main character voices soon”, he says, but “there's potential for secondary or minor roles, especially in games with expansive worlds requiring a vast array of characters.” SAG-AFTRA probably won't be happy to hear that.

It's good to see a studio learning from their mistakes; we all love video games, and it shouldn't be controversial to say that the people who work on them deserve good working conditions and suitable pay. I, for one, hope for a future where we can all sleep a little easier knowing that the games we play are made ethically.