Rockstar didn't receive "similar" criticism. They got some fallout over that interview, but the whole issue was very much forgotten the moment the game was released and everybody was just fawning over all the details.
At that point working conditions at Rockstar became a side-topic barely mentioned in reviews and discussions about the game, if at all.
While with CP2077 CDPR at least tried to do better, they set for themselves the goal not to crunch, take the time the game needs, they were not in the press giving interviews glorifying crunch as something awesome and necesseary.
Which for such an ambitious project was aiming very high, maybe naively so, but at least they tried. Yet currently the majority of discourse around the game is dominated by what an evil company CDPR is for still having to put in crunch. To such a degree where mentioning anything positive about the game will trigger responses talking about "slave labor". Which often is, quite uncynically, followed up with "Just look at Rockstar, that's how you make a proper open-world game!", a lot of eating the cake while still wanting to have it.
So what's the lesson here? That crunch is only bad if the resulting product ain't an unmitigated Rockstar style success?
> (lynching) It overwhelmingly refers to hate crimes along the basis of race or religin.
It overwhelmingly refers to the practices by Charles Lynch punishing loyalist supporters of the British during the American Revolutionary war, which had nothing to do with race or religion. Colloquially used it refers to citizen vigilante justice, and that's very much how a lot of this CDPR hate feels like.
> CD Projekt is a corporation worth billions of dollars that is being called out for treating its employees poorly.
CDPR is not even worth half a billion, they are a dwarf compared to actual billion dollar corporations like Take2, Ubisoft, EA or Activision Blizzard.
CDPR also has pretty much the best pro-consumer practices track-record out of all of them, releasing AAA titles with not even as much DRM as a serial; Just an executable anybody could copy and distribute.
They don't sell single-player games with predatory MTX as all the aforementioned publishers do, even for single-player games.
They at least tried to make an commitment to less crunch and taking their time, until the realities of investor financing forced their hand.
Yet apparently none of that is worth any goodwill, nor do labor-rights at companies like Ubisoft, EA or ActiBlizz really factor in any of these discussions right now, even tho they also just released massive games that very likely involved crunching to get them out of the door.
I would understand this whole situation if they all faced criticism like that, particularly the actual billions dollar worth corporations, but that's not happening: Ubisoft and ActiBlizz get a complete pass, while CDPR is made out to be the new EA of the industry.
If you don't work for CDPR I have no idea why you care so much about them. Also CDPR has a market cap of over $8bn so I'm not sure where you're getting your information from.
Also comparing them to other companies is completely pointless and besides the point. Everything you are saying holds no value, and adds nothing to the conversation. You are defending CDPR using illogical and tangentially related arguments.
CDPR saying they worked to reduce crunch means literally nothing. Just because a company produces a product you like does not mean you have to turn a blind eye to horrible practices. Witcher 3 had horrible crunch, it was reported and CDPR didn't address it. It happens again with 2077, they admit it and now I'm your eyes they're the misunderstood good guys? Laughable.
> Also CDPR has a market cap of over $8bn so I'm not sure where you're getting your information from.
I get my information from total company assets instead of highly fluctuating market cap.
> CDPR saying they worked to reduce crunch means literally nothing.
Trying to make a commitment to less crunch is at least making an attempt at improving the situation, the same can't be said about bragging about how it's a "lifestyle" and then everybody being in awe about all the crunched in details, like pooping horses.
> Just because a company produces a product you like does not mean you have to turn a blind eye to horrible practices.
It's not about me liking the product or not, it's about the fact how crunch is conveniently overlooked when the final product is critically acclaimed and well received, which is apparently how this works when looking at plenty of other examples.
The only lesson corporate leadership takes from that is that crunch is okay as long as the final product justifies it, and because that's the default assumption for any product, as nobody aims to create a mediocre one, it will effectively change nothing about the underlying culture that's the actual root of the problem.
That's why I take issue with singling out CDPR as it's happening right now; It's a scapegoat distracting from an industry-wide problem. I'm willing to bet money that if CP2077 would have turned out like a GTAV or RDR2, then the public discourse around crunch would have gotten drowned out among all the positivity, just as it happened with those two, and plenty of other, games.
Yeah, Rockstar received all of the same criticism for a few weeks, then people stopped talking about it and forgot. Give it a month or two and people will stop talking about this one too.
> It overwhelmingly refers to the practices by Charles Lynch punishing loyalist supporters of the British during the American Revolutionary war
No, it doesn't, that's just some pedantry you learned on Wikipedia. Literally nobody uses the word "lynching" in that way. Language changes.
At that point working conditions at Rockstar became a side-topic barely mentioned in reviews and discussions about the game, if at all.
While with CP2077 CDPR at least tried to do better, they set for themselves the goal not to crunch, take the time the game needs, they were not in the press giving interviews glorifying crunch as something awesome and necesseary.
Which for such an ambitious project was aiming very high, maybe naively so, but at least they tried. Yet currently the majority of discourse around the game is dominated by what an evil company CDPR is for still having to put in crunch. To such a degree where mentioning anything positive about the game will trigger responses talking about "slave labor". Which often is, quite uncynically, followed up with "Just look at Rockstar, that's how you make a proper open-world game!", a lot of eating the cake while still wanting to have it.
So what's the lesson here? That crunch is only bad if the resulting product ain't an unmitigated Rockstar style success?
> (lynching) It overwhelmingly refers to hate crimes along the basis of race or religin.
It overwhelmingly refers to the practices by Charles Lynch punishing loyalist supporters of the British during the American Revolutionary war, which had nothing to do with race or religion. Colloquially used it refers to citizen vigilante justice, and that's very much how a lot of this CDPR hate feels like.
> CD Projekt is a corporation worth billions of dollars that is being called out for treating its employees poorly.
CDPR is not even worth half a billion, they are a dwarf compared to actual billion dollar corporations like Take2, Ubisoft, EA or Activision Blizzard.
CDPR also has pretty much the best pro-consumer practices track-record out of all of them, releasing AAA titles with not even as much DRM as a serial; Just an executable anybody could copy and distribute.
They don't sell single-player games with predatory MTX as all the aforementioned publishers do, even for single-player games.
They at least tried to make an commitment to less crunch and taking their time, until the realities of investor financing forced their hand.
Yet apparently none of that is worth any goodwill, nor do labor-rights at companies like Ubisoft, EA or ActiBlizz really factor in any of these discussions right now, even tho they also just released massive games that very likely involved crunching to get them out of the door.
I would understand this whole situation if they all faced criticism like that, particularly the actual billions dollar worth corporations, but that's not happening: Ubisoft and ActiBlizz get a complete pass, while CDPR is made out to be the new EA of the industry.