Update: Bungie CEO Pete Parsons took to X/Twitter to share some thoughts on the layoffs.
Stressed Out by Mass Layoffs, CD Projekt Staff Have Finally Set Out to Unionize — So What’s Next?
24.10.2023 - 09:10 / ign.com
When Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt laid off 100 workers in the summer, some staff said enough was enough. Sick of the stress and anxiety caused by the spectre of job cuts, the workers set out to form a union. It was a big idea with small beginnings that has the potential to grow beyond the confines of CD Projekt’s Warsaw headquarters to become Poland’s game developer union, offering a home to all with a valid contract in the country.
For this small group of CD Projekt developers, the sky’s the limit, and they are galvanised by similar efforts across the world. Związek Pracowników Branży Gier, or Polish Gamedev Workers Union, is a part of a growing labor movement within the volatile video game industry that aims to mitigate some of its worst features: crunch, poor pay, and the worry that comes from the thought that you could be out of a job any time, any day.
Paula Mackiewicz-Armstrong has worked at CD Projekt for five years on pretty much everything as a linguistic QA (quality assurance) coordinator. “I have been in the trenches in 2019 and 2020,” Mackiewicz-Armstrong tells IGN in a video call. “I have seen the fires in Jupiter burning.”
CD Projekt was heavily criticized for the human cost of Cyberpunk 2077, with mandatory crunch in the run up to the sci-fi game’s disastrous 2020 launch. This came after CD Projekt had promised its employees they wouldn’t be forced to crunch on the game. For the recently released expansion Phantom Liberty, however, improvements were made. Staff say the balance between work and life has realigned. “The conditions and the culture have been improving,” Mackiewicz-Armstrong says. “And yes, I am happy that CDPR is committed to those improvements, but it's still not perfect.”
Overtime is voluntary, but the staff say it’s hard to avoid certain pressures to take it on. There is, of course, financial pressure to earn extra money that means sometimes it’s just impossible to pass up overtime, especially amid a cost of living crisis. Other pressures are more subtle. Some staff feel the pressure of responsibility to a part of a game they’re working on, to each other, and to their team. “There isn't any sort of direct peer pressure or anything like that, but there is this vibe of, time is short, we need to deliver, right?” Mackiewicz-Armstrong says.
Tolly Kulczycki is coming up on two years at CD Projekt, and is currently a technical QA analyst working on Polaris, aka the next game in The Witcher series. “You feel pressure, responsibility for your part of your game and you want to be there for it,” Kulczycki says. “The industry, fueled by passion, ultimately burns out its people. And that's an unfortunate truth that we have to face and fight, and no better way to fight it than
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