Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher studio CD Projekt laying off 100 staff

holoyolo@partizle.com to Gaming@beehaw.org – 149 points –
Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher studio CD Projekt laying off 100 staff
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No, this is not really typical for a large studio. I've been in the games industry for 10 years and losing your team every project is a studio killer. No one does this anymore aside from really small indie studios that can't afford to keep the team together. This is not normal for a studio that knows what it's doing.

This is not normal for a studio that knows what it’s doing.

And CDPR absolutely doesn't. Their games may look pretty but the quality is always absolute dogshit and takes years to patch until it's not a buggy mess

Saying that GDPR doesn't know what it's doing is like saying MGM doesn't know what it's doing. They aren't the best in the industry but they've still made some quality products. They know far more about what they are doing than an indie studio that hasn't even released their first game.

That's a low bar lol

GDPR fans always come up with the most ridiculous excuses for GDPR's terrible quality. "Well at least they're better than an indie that's never released a game", like seriously?

I'm not a GDPR fan at all. They put out one game I even got through and it was mediocre. I'm just not a fan of the general gaming public thinking they know more than a studio full of veterans.

Ah the classic "if you haven't done X yourself you have no right to criticize X." I trust you never criticize books, movies, paintings, games etc of you're not in those fields?

And, funnily enough, I spent almost 15 years in the games industry as a developer, but I suppose I'm still not allowed to say anything bad about GDPR's quality because, uh, reasons

I'm not saying that they can't criticize. I'm saying it's still a studio that I would say knows what it's doing more so than a studio that is going to lay off a bunch of people just because the project they were working on ended. You've been in the industry for 15 years, how many times have you been laid off at the end of a project at a well-formed studio? In my experience, it rarely happens. If you have a good team you don't break it up willingly.

That's all I said. It doesn't make business sense to do so and CDPR and any well-put-together studio knows this. Any business knows this. To say that "Well, it's CDPR thus they are going to make stupid mistakes that a novice indie team would make" is silly and not seated in reality.

Not really the case, I was hired 1.5 year ago. There were a bunch of new hires in the meantime and after the layoffs the team looks really similar to what it looked like at the point at which I was hired.

If that's the case, it's not the norm. Most studios do not lay people off every release. They get them working on another project immediately. Typically a project starts up as the game is wrapping up for release then people switch gradually.