CD Projekt Red Addresses Ex-Employee Complaints Alleging Mistreatment Of Workers

The Polish video game company CD Projekt Red is known for running the digital distribution platform GOG.com and producing the massively popular The Witcher franchise. However, rumors of poor working conditions and mistreatment of employees have been swirling for months due to inflammatory reviews of supposed former employees. It seems the company has finally had enough and decided to address the matter.

Via the company’s official Twitter account, CD Projekt Red posted a letter addressing the concerns that its fans may have about the current state of its house morale, providing details on its next project Cyberpunk 2077, and the reviews by former employees.

In the statement, both co-founder Marcin Iwinski and studio head Adam Badowski basically said that developing games such as The Witcher series can often feel impossible. As a result, work can become hectic as the pressure to develop excellent titles come up, especially with a studio as focused on perfection as CD Projekt.

“The approach to making games is not for everyone,” the statement reads. “It often requires a conscious effort to ‘reinvent the wheel’ — even if you personally think it already works like a charm. But you know what? We believe reinventing that wheel every friggin’ time is what makes a better game.”

As for the reviews themselves, it would seem that the company is not denying that they could be coming from actual former employees. They are being posted on the worker review site Glassdoor, where former or even current employees can anonymously comment on certain companies, Polygon reports.

In the case of former workers of CD Projekt, the majority of the complaints appear to stem from being overworked, especially when the crunch starts bearing down on the developers. This is nothing new in the video game industry, which is notorious for terrible working conditions.

With regards to Cyberpunk 2077, the letter indicates that work is progressing at a slow pace. The company has also started receiving positive reviews, but they have only started appearing over the last few days.