Unionisation still necessary despite improvements, say CDPR devs, after the 'tremendous amount of stress and insecurity' caused by recent layoffs
Earlier this month, Polish game devs, including several from CD Projekt Red, formed the Polish Gamedev Workers Union (PGWU). This came in the wake of further layoffs at the company in July, to the tune of 9% of its workforce. At the time, CEO Adam Kiciński explained the move as something to help make the teams more «agile and effective», but agile and effective doesn't pay the rent.
«This event created a tremendous amount of stress and insecurity,» explains the union's website, «affecting our mental health and leading to the creation of this union in response. Having a union means having more security, transparency, better protection, and a stronger voice in times of crisis.»
The devs at CD Projekt Red have shed more light on the situation during an interview with IGN, saying that the aftershocks of the game's crunch culture problems—both with the Witcher 3 in 2017 and Cyberpunk 2077 in 2019—led to that unnerving climate.
Linguistic QA Assurance Coordinator Paula Mackiewicz-Armstrong says that while things are looking up for the company as a whole, they're still not good enough. «I have been in the trenches in 2019 and 2020. I have seen the fires in Jupiter burning … I am happy that CDPR is committed to those improvements, but it's still not perfect.»
These changes involve a commitment to reducing crunch culture that largely seems to have taken hold, and while there is still overtime, Mackiewicz-Armstrong says «overall it has been healthier.» Jason Slama, the director of the next Witcher game, responded to related accusations with a resolute "Never on my watch!" But crunch isn't the only thing devs need to fear, as that 2023 wave of layoff shows.
«When you have a person close to you who you've worked with for a long
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