For one of the more decorated, profitable video game studios in the world, CD Projekt Red has had an exceptionally rocky past few years. Multiple reports of crunch dogged The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 developer even during its best days, and then the latter’s rushed release led to a craterous crash. Afterward, CDPR promised to do better – and, to hear workers at the studio tell it, it mostly succeeded. At least, until the layoffs came.
In July, CD Projekt laid off around 100 workers, or roughly nine percent of its workforce. This was its third round of layoffs in as many months. In October, workers at CD Projekt announced the formation of the Polish Gamedev Workers Union in collaboration with OZZ IP, a larger Polish union covering multiple sectors. The union wants to give workers at the company more of a voice – and to transform CDPR into less of a revolving door.
"There has been kind of an evolution of the culture, especially after, you know, the launch in 2020 – the armageddon, the great reckoning,” Paula Mackiewicz-Armstrong, a localization QA coordinator who’s worked at CDPR for over five years, told Aftermath. “It was a very difficult time for a lot of people. A lot of people became disillusioned and left. Then we had to find replacements. … It was a time of turmoil and change, and it didn't really help smooth the development process. It created delays, it created confusion.”
In the video game industry, turnover is common even when a project manages to achieve liftoff without incident. This is how you end up with games from the same studio that nonetheless feel markedly different, explained Artur Ganszyniec, a designer formerly at CD Projekt who is aiding in the union’s goal of organizing the broader Polish video game industry.
"The [challenge] is not to make a good game,” Ganszyniec told Aftermath. “The real challenge is to make a decent game and have the team stay. Because quite often you make a great game and half of the people leave. The know-how goes away, the specific combination of talents goes away, and you have to put money and time into building a new team – and you don't know that the new team will be able to make an equally good game. They probably will, but you don't know what the game will be because they are new people with new perspectives. This is a great hidden cost that management ignores."
But even amidst shakeups that necessitated new high-level staff, CDPR ultimately found its footing again: “We pulled through,” said Mackiewicz-Armstrong. “We found some new, great leaders who are pushing things forward. … The company made promises to change, and those promises have largely been kept in terms of having less crunch, in terms of improving compensation. The company took a lot of lessons to heart."
Proof met pudding in the form of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, an Idris Elba hangout simulator workers say was developed under better conditions than the original Keanu Reeves hangout simulator. It was also significantly better received. But CD Projekt management still ultimately elected to lay off 100 workers, a decision that took (relative) long-timers like Mackiewicz-Armstrong by surprise.
“It was just such a shock,” she said. “We thought we were doing well, that we were all safe and things were improving. Then this decision came. In the general climate of uncertainty in the industry as a whole, that's where a union became really necessary."
In Poland, Mackiewicz-Armstrong said, unions can have serious sway when it comes to the sorts of layoffs that regularly – and especially recently – plague the video game industry.
"Layoffs are often a surprise even for direct managers of the people being laid off. They don't really have the opportunity to fight for their employees. It's presented as a done deal,” she said. “But a union is involved in this process much, much earlier. You can no longer spring layoffs onto everyone as a surprise. You have to discuss it with the union. There's kind of a more transparent process going on that can make a company think twice like, 'Is it worth engaging in this if we have to lay it all out in the open?'"
Armed with this knowledge, unions can also push back on companies’ rationale for laying off specific groups or individuals.
"Companies often use outside business consultants that are like, 'OK, you need to cut costs. You can lay off this many people, and it should be optimal and whatever,'” said Mackiewicz-Armstrong. “But the union is close to the people, close to the immediate process of the work of making a game. And we can say, 'Well, OK, you think this team is too large and you want to cut them by 10-20 percent; we think this will have consequences.' We can present arguments and try and discuss it with the management.”
But of course, companies can still choose to simply ignore that advice, giving the union the option to – as Ganszyniec put it – "force negotiation that can lead to a strike."
“But that’s not something anybody wants,” he said.
Union members at CD Projekt Red hope to work with the company – not against it – to achieve a whole host of goals.
“What motivated us the most was the layoffs, but we still want to focus on other things,” said Lev Ki, a gameplay programmer at CDPR. “We want to overall have a better working environment, better conditions, better benefits, better everything – not only in CD Projekt, but in the Polish industry as a whole."
The Polish video game industry, Ganszyniec noted, is growing rapidly, with around 400 companies at scales that run the gamut from five-person indie studios to, in a few cases, staffs of hundreds. There are also outsourcing companies that handle QA and localization, and the union is setting its sights on that portion of the Polish video game industry as well.
"[Outsourcing studios] are segregated into projects, and they don't have much contact with their colleagues on other assignments, while their pay and conditions can often be very low indeed," said Mackiewicz-Armstrong. "This will be a big challenge when it comes to the union and tackling their issues, but we also want to help them."
The fight begins at home, though, and despite recent troubles, Mackiewicz-Armstrong still has high hopes for CD Projekt Red.
"CDPR has this commitment toward improvement, and that's why I dearly hope that this can be a partnership,” she said. “I believe that the union can support the company in the changes it wants to make. I would love for CD Projekt to become this great example of a trailblazer of labor practices, just as we are a trailblazer of making good games. It's my greatest wish that this will happen."
"We are a relatively young industry,” added Ki. “We can set standards. It's not too late. But we need to do it. ... We need to put in the work to make this actually happen."
