Cyberpunk 2077 has been hotly anticipated for some time, and while we don't expect a release any time soon, CD Projekt Red have re-affirmed their commitment that the development team won't be subject to the same "crunch" that they faced for The Witcher 3.

The company had previously stated that there would be 'non-obligatory' crunch, but in an interview with Kotaku during E3, co-founder Marcin Iwiński again confirmed that the company will be taking a more "humane" approach this time around, with the crunch policy becoming "non-obligatory".

Employee treatment has become something more developers are having to take on board recently, with several controversies having caused major negative PR, with game developers often forced to work extremely long hours and even face suffering health as a result.

Indeed, back in 2017, CD Projekt Red faced such a controversy when former employees launched criticism at the company for the long working hours they were forced into when The Witcher 3 was approaching it's deadline - although back then the company defended the practice.

Some people were working long hours on the demo and some who felt like they wanted to leave, they were leaving, and it was no problem, actually it's still a lot of work of work ahead of us [on the crunch policy] because we want to make sure that there will be no guilt when people will be leaving early if they need to, in case we ask some people to stay. But I think that's how it's supposed to be, and I'm really happy with that.

Now, we don't expect crunch to go away based on this interview, and indeed while it may not be mandatory, we can see many employees still feeling like they should for the good of the project, but at least now employees will be safe should they not be able to take part in the "crunching" festivities - or so we hope.