Union Formed by CD Projekt Red Employees Following Layoffs

Image: CD Projekt Red

Oli Welsh
is elderly editor, U.K., offering information, evaluation, and objection of movie, TELEVISION, and games. He has actually been covering business & society of video clip games for 20 years.

Some team at CD Projekt Red, the Polish programmer of Cyberpunk 2077 and the Witcher games, have actually created the Polish Gamedev Workers Union in reaction to current discharges at the workshop.

The union is open to anybody functioning throughout the game market under a Polish agreement, although presently it just has a firm compensation at CD Projekt Red (with an unidentified variety of participants), and will originally be concentrated on enhancing the lives of staff members there. It’s component of a much bigger Polish union, OZZ Inicjatywa Pracownicza.

The union claimed it was CD Projekt Red’s choice to lay off around 100 workers — 9% of its labor force — in 2023 that triggered its development. The firm has actually simply launched Phantom Liberty, the initial and only growth for Cyberpunk 2077, and is currently unwinding work with that game as it constructs in the direction of a brand-new Witcher title and a Cyberpunk follow up, in addition to several other projects.

“We started talking about unionizing after the 2023 wave of layoffs,” The Polish Gamedev Workers Union said in a FAQ on its site. “This event created a tremendous amount of stress and insecurity, 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. […] We believe that the mass layoffs are a danger to the gamedev industry and we believe that unionizing is a way for us to preserve the industry’s potential.”

The union claimed its top priority was to offer CD Projekt Red team a voice in firm decision-making, for raising work security. It additionally intends to assist employees’ voices be listened to on functioning problems “in the long run.”

In a meeting with Polish website CD Action, union owners Lev Ki and Paweł Myszka — both CD Projekt Red staff members, operating in shows and QA specifically — claimed that the workshop had in fact made excellent strides in enhancing working problems, particularly in getting rid of crisis. CD Projekt Red had actually promised it would certainly attempt to provide Cyberpunk 2077 without crisis, however reportedly failed in this purpose. It appears that, with Phantom Liberty, it has actually ultimately made great on its assurance.

“While working on Phantom Liberty there was no crunch, certainly not to the same extent as with the [base game],” Myszka informed CD Action (through Google Translate). “There were overtime hours only for those willing, paid or taken as vacation days. The company introduced an anti-crunch policy, which was consistently implemented and enforced. Agile [development] has indeed also been introduced, but remember that the agile methodology is a process, you cannot simply switch to Agile, you are constantly implementing it. This has actually been achieved and the atmosphere in the company is good.”

Myszka additionally indicated the cozy function to Phantom Liberty from movie critics and followers, versus the buggy and incomplete launch of Cyberpunk 2077. “The entire development of Phantom Liberty has proven that when you treat an employee well, he gives more of himself and the end result of his work is better. This translates into higher product quality. The trade union exists to maintain this high standard of working conditions and improve those elements that could be better.”

Ki decreased to offer the variety of CD Projekt Red staff members that had actually subscribed to the union for lawful factors, however kept in mind that a minimum of 10 were required for the union to be created. The 2 owners claimed that they had yet to obtain any type of reaction to the development of the union from CD Projekt Red’s administration, however that they had actually met no resistance or disturbance yet. Their hope is to boost the great deal of employees throughout the Polish game market, and to enlighten even more employees on the advantages of complete employment agreement, rather than freelance having which is evidently extensive in the nation.

Polygon has actually asked CD Projekt Red for remark.

 

Source: Polygon