What went wrong with Cyberpunk 2077? Interviews with more than 20 current and former CD Projekt staff paint a complex picture. Unchecked ambition, technical woes, unrealistic deadlines, and above all, one belief: "We made The Witcher 3 -- it'll work out."

Devs at CD Projekt said despite promises that crunch would not be mandatory, they felt pressured to work overtime on and off for years. I can't share all the stories, but here's one on the record that may help explain why it's been infuriating to see people downplay CDPR's crunch
Anthem's developers talked about "BioWare magic" -- an unwavering belief that with enough hard work and crunch, their games would come together. CD Projekt was similar. When asked about unrealistic deadlines, directors would say they'd be fine. They made The Witcher 3, after all
Some tidbits that were cut from the piece:
- Veteran devs from other companies were shocked at CDPR's free-for-all production. One example: if someone needed a shader, they'd make it, with no pipeline in place to determine whether someone had already made one w/ the same function
- One CDPR developer told their manager that they didn't want to work overtime, as their CEO had said would be OK. Fine, their manager said, but one of their other coworkers would just have to work extra hours to make up for them. Several other developers shared similar stories

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"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".