From Bloomberg:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-29/cyberpunk-2077-publisher-orders-6-day-weeks-ahead-of-game-debut

Remember all the shit Naughty Dog caught for that exact same thing?  And these guys at the time came out all high and mighty saying that they'd never force crunch on their employees?

Pepperidge Farms remembers! 

This sucks, and happens in all sorts of TI industries. Devs work just isn't respect

Development time and constraints are extremaly hard to predict, this not aligns well with right set-on-stone release dates

I've read it on the Cyberpunk reddit. So many apologists in there claiming it's impossible to have no crunch period in software development. Here's an official statement.

“Starting today, the entire (development) studio is in overdrive,” Badowski wrote, elaborating that this meant “your typical amount of work and one day of the weekend.” The extra work would be paid, as required by Polish labor laws. Many other video game studios don’t pay for overtime.

“I take it upon myself to receive the full backlash for the decision,” he wrote. “I know this is in direct opposition to what we’ve said about crunch. It’s also in direct opposition to what I personally grew to believe a while back -- that crunch should never be the answer. But we’ve extended all other possible means of navigating the situation.”

Especially the last sentence irks me. It's just a blatant lie and deflection. It's pretty heartbreaking that this is coming from one of the very few companies in the luxury position to not have to do this. Also that other stupid statement about other companies not paying overtime. Ah, yes, I applaud your extraordinary generous gesture of complying with local law.

Now we just wait for more people to downplay this because vidya gaemz are more importanter than proper work conditions.

Normally one would think that a delay is a means to avoid crunch, but in my experience delays only happen when you can't get it done even with crunch. Hence why they don't feel the need to delay it once again since it can be handled with crunch.

Take out large student loan to get a game development degree. Work 9am to 9pm 6 days a week to make a videogame. Get paid a salary, so nobody has to pay you overtime. The salary is 50 grand a year, because you are an entry level employee. After student loan interest you wind up making something like $10 an hour. Truly a shit industry to work in.

And now we know why Indie studios keep popping up left and right!

Don't support crunch developers. Buy used. Don't support this crap practice.

Is it even legal? 

That's terrible. I would have thought less crunch would be needed in the lead up to launch since the game should be practically finished at this point, I guess I was wrong about that.

I am maybe in minority here but i rly dont care about that. Most of developers work when they want to work and nobody force them, only when game is close to release they work harder. So out of 60 months (counting from Witcher 3 release) they maybe worked 3-4 months harder while the other 56-57 they maybe worker few hours per day at best.

In shithole countries, yes.