Perhaps they also wanted to preempt a potential story. After the publication of our Anthem investigation last month, which documented a turbulent development marked by mismanagement, crunch, and anxiety, four former CD Projekt Red employees reached out to tell me that they had seen similar problems in Warsaw. “I’ve felt that there are hundreds of parallels that could be drawn between the story of the rocky development of Anthem and the story of the rocky and even-more-rocky-to-become development of Cyberpunk 2077,” said one former CDPR employee in an e-mail. “At times, I’ve felt I could just replace the studio name and the game title, and it would all look so similar, almost identical.”
There have been rumors of financial trouble swirling within CD Projekt Red following the disappointing performance of last year’s Thronebreaker campaign for the studio’s virtual card game Gwent. Iwiński and Badowski denied the rumors. “We have a big war chest,” Iwiński said. There have also been signs that development on Cyberpunk 2077 might not be going smoothly. For example, as the employees who reached out told me, this year the company has told staff to work through Polish holidays, and that there will be mandated periods for vacation. Rather than take off whenever they’d like, CD Projekt Red’s developers have to limit their vacation to specific times in 2019. One period will be this summer, right after E3, while another will be in the winter.