Welcome to the wonderful world of public relations. :)

While people have already shared opinions very close to mine here (that the CDPR PR statement is empty, void and useless stuff probably aimed at investors), I'd like to add a few comments on work and work environments:

- Wasn't the problem with crunch time not only the fact that it tended to be abusive, it was also never properly paid? (I say this generically of the games industry, not specifically of CDPR)

- I always felt that companies aiming for flat hierarchies completely miss the point of it: to prevent power hungry assholes, who may or may not be incompetent, from having positions of power. It's inevitable that some people will have different responsibilities more akin to leadership and management in any large enough corporate environment. The point is BE a leader, not a bossy asshole. But then, again, I could be wrong here.

- For a market segment concentrating so many great creative talents, it's impressive how few good managers it seems to have. Not that I think good management is easy to come by, by any means, and I've seem great managers commit their share of stupid decisions, but it would be nice to see that they aren't all imbeciles in the games industry.

- As someone who was never part of a labor union nor has ever even considered going on a strike, I've dated a woman who was not only part of a labor union, but very active in it. The point being, changing jobs isn't always as simple as we'd love it to be (and, hey, I have been unemployed for a little over a year now) and fighting for better work conditions is, very often, a necessity, especially in industries where the work condition standard is so fuckin' low as the games industry (which allows itself to have terrible work conditions because it is a dream industry for a lot of young people, so it has the luxury of being able to regularly completely burn out talent, because there's always more coming in). Honestly, the "if you can't take the job, then don't try it, crybaby" mentality is not only completely dumb, it is toxic and works against everyone including those who usually utter said words.

Big green +1 to most of what you wrote, but I'm a little on the torn side for this part. Because for most people in game development, their creative control of and creative participation in the project is 0%. They're working for someone else's dream and shoulder most of the workload. That, also, is a price of huge AAA games.

It just can't be everybody's dream, and particularly in the crunch and final parts of game development, the creatives can go on vacation already while programmers etc. will work into oblivion. So that's not fair. It's just not fair to work yourself to death over someone else's dream. :(

It's the company's money. They can do with it what they want. So if they want to scrap ideas that have already been developed very far, they can do that. But to then issue crunch time because they still want the game delivered on time... yeah.

"Crunch time" is not even specific to the creative industry, let alone the gaming industry. The problem is this - there are two major pay models in the job industry. The first is an hourly wage and is the sort of thing that you encounter in blue-collar work as well as lower-tier clerk & administrative jobs. The second is a monthly salary, where the employee is expected to attend for a certain number of hours and may be asked to do (usually) unpaid overtime as needs be. There's a certain "trust" element here that employers won't abuse this principle by imposing unrealistic targets and forcing employees to do excessive overtime. The problem: employers did abuse it - massively - which is what made the EU's Working Time Directive absolutely necessary.

The problem is that flat hierarchies are a paradox contrary to human nature. It relies on the fallacy that we as human beings are wired by default to be individualist, but we're not. Homo sapiens is collectivist, tends to congregate around authority figures, and usually falls apart in isolation. If those authority figures aren't defined by an objective and systematic approach, then they arise by natural means. And those authority figures aren't necessarily the most competent, but merely the most charismatic and psychologically dominant. That's why, for instance, we saw the rise of warlords in anarchic societies like Somalia in the 90s and 2000s.

Most aren't imbeciles. In my experience the problem is that most of them fall too far to either extreme - either they're too "buddy buddy" with the staff assigned to them and don't enforce enough discipline to preserve "flat hierarchies", or they micromanage excessively and don't give their staff any space to breathe. Many of them are not really born leaders, but they try to force themselves to be.

I love how the GOG forum members are always totally honest! LOL! That's very rare. Almost every other forum is filled with fanboy sycophants who will praise anything that the person or company who the forum is about says or does.

I agree that the PR-speak propaganda is very transparent as such. That is not helping them in the minds of critical readers.

On the other hand, some of the criticisms on Glassdoor are ridiculous. One alleged ex-employee there made a comment like: "The game is designed by a few people, and everyone else just follows their orders and doesn't have any input about the design." That's actually great. If they tried to let every employee design the game simultaneously, then they'd never get any work done, and if they did, then the final game product that ships would be a disaster.

This alone is the reason, while this forum has its ups and downs, that I stay even when we go through the ultra low times. The general level of honesty in here is something that I don't see very often in my life, outside of a few select family members.

Oh, I got it. Here in Brazil things are a bit different normally, at least where the IT industry is concerned. You are hired with a monthly salary and a certain number of hours per week/month as well, but they usually accumulate the overtime or the missed time in a spreadsheet. Now, different companies approach the excess or lack of hours differently, but they'll generally pay you your accumulated overtime after a couple of months, or tell you to stay home for a few days so they don't have to pay you that extra money. Likewise, some companies subtract your missing hours from your salary every so often, if you don't replace them, others will only do it when you quit the job (and every overtime hour that you put in will be to pay missed hours until you even out, anyway).

We are not talking about North Korea or ISIS here, but an European game development studio/publisher. Why should I care what their work conditions are? I am not applying for a job there, and if some CDPR programmer disagrees with his/her work conditions/pay/whatever, then they are free to leave the company.

If, however, there had been any potentially illegal activities happening like delayed or skipped salary payments... that's what lawyers are for. I presume CDPR doesn't have these kinds of issues, but yeah I know there have been many game development studios or publishers which have went under and employees haven't got all what they deserved. Game development business...

I am unsure what all the allegations are, I saw earlier some person complaining about mid-level management (or lack there-of) etc., it didn't sound so alarming that we should call Amnesty and we don't know how much of it is true anyway. Isn't it quite normal for many people to talk shit about their former employers? Quite often said people themselves are troublemakers and hard to work with, so...

Still not my nor Amnesty's problem. If CDPR now misses a talented artist, I guess they need to hire a new one then, and try to keep him/her happy. Isn't this quite normal?

As long as I haven't pre-ordered anything, I'm fine. I pre-ordered The Witcher 3 though, and I don't feel CDPR left me disappointed there.

And I couldn't care less if CDPR was in some "internal chaos" when making The Witcher 3, they still delivered it fine.

I still don't understand why some of you act as if this is some humanitarian problem, or your problem. Unless you are CDPR investors or thinking of applying for a job there.