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When Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt laid off 100 workers in the summer, some staff said enough was enough. Sick of the stress and anxiety caused by the spectre of job cuts, the workers set out to form a union. It was a big idea with small beginnings that has the potential to grow beyond the confines of CD Projekt\u2019s Warsaw headquarters to become Poland\u2019s game developer union, offering a home to all with a valid contract in the country.<\/p>\n

For this small group of CD Projekt developers, the sky\u2019s the limit, and they are galvanised by similar efforts across the world. Zwi\u0105zek Pracownik\u00f3w Bran\u017cy Gier, or Polish Gamedev Workers Union, is a part of a growing labor movement within the volatile video game industry that aims to mitigate some of its worst features: crunch, poor pay, and the worry that comes from the thought that you could be out of a job any time, any day.<\/p>\n

I have been in the trenches in 2019 and 2020. I have seen the fires in Jupiter burning.<\/h5>\n

Paula Mackiewicz-Armstrong has worked at CD Projekt for five years on pretty much everything as a linguistic QA (quality assurance) coordinator. \u201cI have been in the trenches in 2019 and 2020,\u201d Mackiewicz-Armstrong tells IGN in a video call. \u201cI have seen the fires in Jupiter burning.\u201d<\/p>\n

CD Projekt was heavily criticized for the human cost of Cyberpunk 2077, with mandatory crunch in the run up to the sci-fi game\u2019s disastrous 2020 launch. This came after CD Projekt had promised its employees they wouldn\u2019t be forced to crunch on the game. For the recently released expansion Phantom Liberty, however, improvements were made. Staff say the balance between work and life has realigned. \u201cThe conditions and the culture have been improving,\u201d Mackiewicz-Armstrong says. \u201cAnd yes, I am happy that CDPR is committed to those improvements, but it’s still not perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overtime is voluntary, but the staff say it\u2019s hard to avoid certain pressures to take it on. There is, of course, financial pressure to earn extra money that means sometimes it\u2019s just impossible to pass up overtime, especially amid a cost of living crisis. Other pressures are more subtle. Some staff feel the pressure of responsibility to a part of a game they\u2019re working on, to each other, and to their team. \u201cThere isn’t any sort of direct peer pressure or anything like that, but there is this vibe of, time is short, we need to deliver, right?\u201d Mackiewicz-Armstrong says.<\/p>\n