Today Cyberpunk 2077 has gone Gold officially, announced CD Projekt RED! The polish developer is happy to share the good news that the game can now be prepared for retail sales. But the crunch period for everyone working on the title continues until November 19. Why is that and should we be worried?
Cyberpunk 2077 has gone gold officially
Earlier today CD Projekt RED announced that Cyberpunk 2077 has achieved Gold status. The game is now completely finished and fully playable from start until the very end. It’s ready to ship after extensive tests by internal testers for quite some time.
The official news came from Cyberpunk 2077’s Twitter account: “Cyberpunk 2077 has gone gold! See you in Night City on November 19th!” – reads the tweet.
The message was accompanied by a fancy graphic featuring Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Silverhand holding a CD ROM.
What does it mean for a game to go gold
When a video game is finished, playable and working properly, it is ready to be sold. This is a period in the development that is also know as “Gold Master” phase.
The image you see above is a reference to that. Johnny is holding a golden disc as if to prove that the game is now complete, ready to be send off to distributors.
Why gold? What’s with that specific color? There’s a bit of a back-story to this. Years ago, back when the main physical carrier of PC and console games were Compact Discs, the term was formed as such and remains popular even today. The reason behind the name are the typical colors of the CD ROMs at the time – they were gold and shiny.
“A game has “Gone Gold” when the final master copy has been produced at the developer and sent off for replication, packaging and shipment. The game is not yet released, but it will typically be around 2-3 weeks (sometimes less) before it begins appearing on store shelves and online pre-orders arriving at doorsteps. The term itself comes from the old practice of recordable CDs being manufactured with gold film. Hence the gold colored CD actually being the source, with no reference to copies sold as in the recording industry.” – according to the Urban Dictionary.
But there is still a whole month and a half until release on November 19. Why did the game go gold so soon? And more importantly…
Why is CD Projekt staff still working in overdrive
Few days ago we found out that everybody working on the game is being forced into a mandatory overdrive mode, also known as “crunch” time.
Crunch is a popular period of time during which you work extra time. In the case of the development of Cyberpunk 2077 this translates into a six-days work week for the full team. The crunch is going to continue until the release of the game on November 19.
Crunch periods are something completely normal in this industry. There have been reports that may of the staff have already been working extra hours for nearly an year in an attempt to create the best possible game experience they can.
The media blew things out of proportion when this crunch thing surfaced as a fact out into the public. The main reason is a statement from CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwiński. He claimed earlier that the studio is going to do their best not to enforce overdrive mode to its employees to finish the game in time.
The crunch period is most likely going to result into a large Day 1 patch for the game. I cannot imagine that the whole game is finished and yet CD Projekt is forcing employees to work overtime for future content after the game is released. While that’s possible, it’s highly unlikely in my opinion.
Is Crunch a bad thing?
No, it doesn’t have to be. It’s not pleasant either. It’s simply part of the job for certain businesses and niches. While everybody is forced into it, this is a frequent practice for game developers all over the world. Most companies don’t bother to even pay additional bonuses and extras to the overdriven developers. That’s also normal, unfortunately, in many parts of the world. And this is why crunch is widely viewed as a horrible thing.
CD Projekt employees are getting paid in accordance with the Polish laws, which means they are all being compensated properly for their extra efforts.
Studio head Adam Badowski recently confirmed that many of the devs have already been putting long hours, working nights and Weekends for a long time.
They have devoted large amounts of effort to this game and they all want it to be as perfect as possible. Or rather with as few bugs as they can catch and fix before shipping.
Working overtime doesn’t have to be bad. Certainly not everyone at the company is happy about it, but the majority of the employees are reportedly not openly against it.
What to expect from Cyberpunk 2077 after release
CD Projekt is going to reveal post-launch plans in more details soon. What we do know so far is that the game will offer a bunch of free DLCs as well as possible expansions (not officially announced yet) – similarly to The Witcher 3’s post-launch history.
Much like The Witcher 3 things are planned accordingly well ahead of initial release. For Geralt’s final adventure the devs knew and had scheduled both of the game’s expansions long time before the release of the game itself.
The Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions were an absolute blast to play through for me (and I am sure for you as well). For the price CDPR asked for these DLCs the amount of content stuffed into them was unbelievable.
Cyberpunk 2077 will also offer Multiplayer. There is almost nothing known about it so far, only rumors. What we did get confirmed is the fact that there will be microtransactions.
Microtransactions in Cyberpunk 2077 will only occur in the Multiplayer mode of the game and will be delivered with taste. The Polish company wants players to feel happy paying additional money for more digital goodies.
If merch is considered microtransactions, they are well into it already and I am a proud owner of quite a few items and apparel.
Cyberpunk 2077’s story is shorter than The Witcher 3’s
Senior quest designer Patrick Mills revealed that the amount of quests and overall time V will need to complete the full Cyberpunk 2077’main story will be a little shorter than the time Geralt needed to complete his own in The Witcher 3.
Given the fact that many players complained of the prolonged narrative Geralt had to go through, it is no wonder that the developers decided to tighten up things a bit for the next game.
Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City is vast world and devs described it recently as an integral main character of the game. Although it’s not huge in terms of ground covered, the vertical element in the city is going to give a whole new meaning of world exploration.
Cyberpunk 2077 launch date remains unchanged
November 19th 2020! The release date has been already delayed enough times and although the game has gone gold, this doesn’t mean everything is perfect and polished.
Going Gold for a video game also means that it is shipped to Microsoft and Sony for licensing and all sorts of check-ups before it is ready to appear on their consoles.
Cyberpunk 2077 will arrive at the same time for PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One. The game will be backwards compatible with the new Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X coming out next month.
CD Projekt RED is working on a free patch that will bring their title officially to the next gen platforms and offer all of the bonuses and perks of playing it on the new consoles.
For PC the title will offer on release everything that you can possibly imagine, headlined by HDR support, DLSS and RTX. The recommended PC System Requirements will not be enough for all of these nice features to shine, but if you have a beast of a PC this game will look like something out of this world, I guarantee you that.
Wondering what to read next? Check out my analysis and overview of the special Russian Night City Wire episode detailing the character backgrounds of Jackie and Johnny.
