Crunch time starts whenever a game is in its final stages of its development. Ben Gilbert described the crunch problem in Business Insider: "Too often, game developers are working unethically long hours to complete games, something that is often referred to as "crunch culture." Crunch Culture is a major issue for developers.
CyberPunk 2077 developers CD Projekt Red revealed that employees were being crunched into a 6 day work week. According to Jason Schreier for the Japanese time, Polish developer CD Projekt Red send out a email asking "all of its employees to work six-day weeks in the lead-up to the November release of Cyberpunk 2077." The email came after the November release date was delayed twice and after the company tried their best to avoid mandatory crunch.
CD Projekt Red has a good reputation with gamers, according to Ryan Epps for the Gamer "Not only in their expansive gaming worlds, as witnessed with The Witcher series, but the Polish company has proven time and time again that it's not just about money or selling a game." Their previous project, the Witcher 3, was also universally praised receiving 9 and 10 out of 10s; their post release support for the game was also praised. But the news about mandatory crunch time has raised questions about what else is going on at CD Projekt Red.
Crunch is a major issue because of what it does to the developers health. Wesley Yin-Poole for EuroGamer describes how some developers working on The Last Of Us Part 2 are suffering from crunch induced burnout and are leaving the industry entirely. A former developer tweeted that one of his friends ended up in the hospital:
For the demo shown last September, the gameplay animators crunched more than I've ever seen and required weeks of recovery afterwards. One good friend of mine was hospitalised at that time due to overwork. He still had over half a year to go. There have been others since.
— Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) March 12, 2020
The gaming industry needs better working conditions for their creative workers or more developers will burnout and end up hating the very project they worked for. Some developers say the game industry should consider unionizing so workers will have guaranteed labor rights and a safety net.