With only just a month and a half to go before one of the most, if not the most, anticipated games of 2020 goes live, CD Projekt Red have announced a ‘studio-wide mandatory crunch’ period for Cyberpunk 2077.

This comes from a Bloomberg report from none other than Jason Schreier, the same Jason Schreier who reported on crunch conditions at Naughty Dog.

CD Projekt Red are known to make masterpiece games. Just look at The Witcher 3. It’s no secret that the amount of content and polish they put into a game is absurd, and with the game being as massive as it is, time is almost never on your side especially when a release date has already been committed after already delaying the game twice.

According to the report, an employee that has requested anonymity has divulged that a studio-wide email was released, enforcing a 6-day workweek leading towards the release of the game currently scheduled for November 19. Obviously this isn’t an ideal situation, but what makes it “worse” is the fact that CDPR was said to have been committed to prioritizing its employees health, directly the opposite of what is happening now.

The alleged email from Studio Head Adam Badowski states that he is optimistic about the state of the game and that they had just sent the game to Microsoft and Sony for certification, but the crunch was required to fix the remaining bugs and glitches.

The good thing, though, is that the extra work would be paid, as it is required by Polish labor laws, and it will be “your typical amount of work and one day of the weekend.”

Badowski knows full well the effects of this and says “I take it upon myself to receive the full backlash for the decision. 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.”

In terms of release quality alone, CDPR has been known to go above and beyond giving players value for their hard earned money, promising free DLC post launch as well as a ton of digital goodies that goes with each purchase of the game.

Should they have just delayed the game again, prioritizing a healthy balance of work and life for their employees? Or was this the only way to go, as Badowski said, that they’ve exhausted all possible options?

CD Projekt Red have not commented on the report as of writing.