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Cyberpunk 2077 is possibly the most famous example of launch day failure in gaming history. On release it was stricken from the Playstation store and sparked one of the longest controversies Triple A Gaming has ever seen.
In the aftermath, some of the reasons behind that disaster have become known, but other factors have yet to see the light of day. Thanks to a whistleblower, and his alleged insider information, today I am able to perhaps shed more light on this famous moment in gaming.
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No no no. With a team this size like on Cyberpunk there for sure was more than one QA company involved, neither 30 nor 60 people are going to cut it. So saying just because one company turned out completely useless doesn't mean there was no QA.
Blaming QA, episode 2137th
"…supposed to be veterans but were juniors instead." -outsourcing companies in a nutshell.
*Still don't understand why they released this game in 2020.
It was so unfinished and buggy to the point that anyone who played it for at least 1 hour could tell that it's NOT ready.
The fact that CDPR went from "when it's ready" to "love it or burn it" says so much about them.
*obviously they are greedy and wanted fast money. They don't care at all about their customers.
I work in QA since over 10 years, and Ive worked for EA and Deep SIlver before. Gaming QA is the biggest joke. You get paid fuckall, have to work unpaid overtime, shitty temp contracts and 90-95% of bugs get ignored. Its not the QAs fault, its always management… Good example. I was offered the senior test manager role for the new project Tropico 7. They offered me half of what I make in normal software development, 0 homeoffice, giant 1-room office, no benefits – this was 1 year ago, during corona hightimes. AND they wanted me to also do IT for them. lol
18 million units sold.
'Fail'
Everyone took a dump on CDPR for CP2077's bugs, and now that this news comes out all the people who supposedly worked for QA support and Quantic Labs come out the woodwork. What a coincidence! Where were you guys when people were hating on CDPR and CP2077?
Ok but having junior tester only affect the speed of bug reports flowing in. But still there were a lot and and 30 min of gameplay you could fing 40 or more bugs. So I don't think that the whole reason for game to look like shit. In every QA bug report you have to state the priority of a bug (A-critical, B-major, C-minor and D-trivial) and it's up to dev to decide what bug to fix. Remember that on CP2077 there were another 2 or 3 third party outsourcing QA companies like Testronic and Q-Loc (operating in Poland) and i used to work for one on different project tho but i remember when i was junior there and everyone got email with survey about familarity with witcher games. And after that they started new project for "New CDPR game" and throwing only senior testers there. So claims that it's only Quantic Lab's fault are total bullshit.
If i worked on "low priority project" there and team leaders were veery strict about bug reports and comunication with clients (devs in most cases) than i don't believe that they put buch of anybodies to the "TOP SECRET – KNOCK FIRST" project (that was litterally printed on the doors to that test room and on the opposite side of corridor there were bunch of Witcher posters hanging xD). I had to pass next to that door because at the end of corridor was recruitment office back in 2018.
Even tho Quantic Labs does a shit load of money their management is garbage at most and not to mention their employee treatment and of course they pay the employees with peanuts. I know this because I almost worked for them – since they're in my hometown – but got warned not to from someone who worked there for many years.
Quality and Quantic Labs don't go in the same sentence, never did and never will.
Yep. Romanian companies in a nutshell. Here, the leads in the companies usually strive to put fear in the employees while paying them the minimum wage (around 500 euros), overwork new talent and not improve or change anything. At this point I don't even think its just about money, more like a power fantasy that those in charge are so hungry for. You see it from the education system all the way to the most complicated companies in this country: the desire to dominate over the smaller people.
From Software and Hello Games proved what good management exists, without blaming QA. CD Projekt RED should learn something from them. 10 BUGS /DAY is your KPI, everyone has it in a corporation. Next, we will blame the players… C2077 was a pos game tbh.
Quality Assurance is not Quantity Assurance.
I've been working QA for 'bout 15 years now, and I can confirm that those quotas – heck, the idea of having a quota in general – are utterly ridiculous. In a complex system – which a game like CP2077 most certainly is – you can sometimes wind up spending hours just chasing down one particularly gnarly and widespread issue, documenting all of its various expressions and peculiarities in order to help the developers nail down what is actually wrong… and all it'll result in is ONE very important bug-report.
I can also echo the importance of experience in this kind of work. Replacing veterans with newbies that have a year or less of experience – or NONE WHATSOEVER – is kind of like swapping someone's milkshake for a mug of cold spunk. QA, indeed, is one of those fields that the uninitiated look at and go "Eh, looks easy, I bet I could do that, no problem…" …but if they actually tried it, they'd find that it's a lot more complicated and demanding than they ever realized.
…all that aside, I gotta say… how's it taken this long for anyone to go "Hey, this big-name game that released with a gazillion bugs… y'think there's MAYBE a problem with their QA provider?" 😛
My dudes might want to give this a read https://twitter.com/LegacyKillaHD/status/1541147000279891969
I'm a little confused. Why would CD Project Red continue to use Quantic if they could see they weren't up to the task? Bugs aside though I still think CD Project failed because the scope was too large for them. The game felt lacking in terms of content and design.
It was great on PC. Bugs were easy to avoid and fix. Just quicksave/quickload.
I worked at this company for only about 2 months, because I couldn't wait to get the fuck out of there, and I can confirm some of the issues put forward by the whistleblower. The management is indeed shit, they pay a very low salary and your opinions don't matter at all. For most of the people who work there this is probably their first job, they're mostly in their mid 20s without a lot of work ethic yet and would gladly find those 10 bugs per day without caring if they're actually bugs or not, just to be able to pay the rent, because that salary barely covers the rent in this town. The training of the new and inexperienced testers is next to 0 and if you have experience in testing they don't really care. Sure the salary is a bit higher, but they still won't transfer you to a high profile game. Also, this mentality of "do more work so the boss sees that you've done something" has a long history with companies in Romania. Quotas are a real problem here in every industry. The problem is that, just like in this case, quotas never work and the end product is still hot garbage. I wasn't on the CP 2077 team, but some testers complained about it a lot and said that the game will be a disaster on launch if they keep going like this.
If the fact that quantic Lab send a lot of minor issues, which, BTW bug reports are ranked by severity, to the cdpr and cdpr was tired of fixing so many minor issues, then they would at least be less minor issues in the game, right? But everything you showed in the video is far from minor, the game s problematic development is because of strict deadline and no one to direct the development, not the QA team. Sorry but this is full of crap
This is nothing new. QL has a long-standing reputation of bad business.
CDPR simply got what they deserved, as of course they are the first responsible for their own crappy code.
I'm new here…what's up with the giraffe? 😀 Is it some metaphor for 'upper echelon' or something?
I have to disagree. Cd project was trying to create a game engine which on its own is difficult, while at the same time developing a game on said unfinished game engine. Tack on massive overhype which they failed to put in check and management that wanted the game out ASAP. It was a recipe for failure, QA was just the glitchy cherry on top.
So (separate from cyberpunk) this is got to be a huge reason to why video games have really gone down hill mostly since the era of more passion projects and creations of love. Now its soulless detached mindless garbage and gobbledygook. Just look at halo 1, silent hill 1 & 2, dead space, alan Wake, max Payne 1 & 2, Batman, LA Noire, BioShock, Fear, Prey 1, NFL Blitz 2001, Banjo kazooie, EA skate 1, Condemned, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, red dead Revolver, SSX tricky, old Mortal Kombat, Portal, star wars force unleashed, half life, doom, evil with-in 1, Metro, Singularity, NBA street/jam, The witcher 3, fight night and different boxing/MMA games (i wish they'd come out with new MMA type games) the list goes on but These games all stand up to this day, i play them still and love and enjoy them still to this day. These are games that genuinely seem created by people who loved what they were making and played it themselves to make sure it was fun and captivating at least in a gameplay sort of way of, that you only learn by sitting down and playing the game yourself along the way. Its truly the only way. I hope games go back to their roots and do that.
I know some of the people who worked on Cyberpunk 2077 and from what I've been told, the blame for Cyberpunk 2077 can't be laid at Quantic Lab's feet alone. CDPR knew what a fricking lemon that had on their hands, it's not that they weren't aware of the mountain of bugs and half-assed game systems, it's that they didn't care. An attitude of "good enough" prevailed among the upper management, so they pushed the game out too early so they could cash in, while the employees did their best to squash bugs and have the game as good as it could be within the time they had. Unfortunately, the extremely toxic working environment led to a huge number of the team members to quit and move on when they got their release bonus, which left few team members to actually fix and improve the game, and work on the expansions. This is the reason why it's taken so long to patch the game, and get the expansions out. And what CDPR isn't telling you, is that they've already downscaled the expansion multiple times.
Hey man I was reading a Forbes article and they reported on and linked this vid. I was surprised cuz the vid never made my feed. I'm a longtime subscriber and I'm impressed at the growth/direction your chanel has taken. Good for you bro, you certainly deserve all your success. Keep up the good work.
As someone who actually worked there, in many departments, this is not fiction.
Great vid.
8 years of totally false promises are what made CP77 to fail. Liars.
Issues like this always come down to idiot managers creating impossible working conditions
What made 2077 fail? Greed.
The amazing results of outsourcing (terceirização in PT-BR) are exactly that: nonfunctional workplaces, overexploited workers, impossible and inneficient demands. All in the name of cutting costs.
To summarize, the same worker must mean profit not for one boss anymore, but for two
This is why I love this channel: never make assumptions, never consider a matter settled, there's always more of the truth to be found and always another facet to an issue or situation.
Still….
I'm left wondering – IF this issue with Quantic Lab was so critical – why CDPR bigwigs didn't throw Quantic under the bus when it came time to admit to the abject failure that was the initial launch of Cyberpunk 2077?
Perhaps they realised the hype was so great and the wrath of the fans was so unending, that there was nothing to be gained, PR-wise, from playing the blame game?