Poor working conditions are one major reason why I'm not striving very hard to get into the gaming industry despite being much more interested in it than I am in web development, which is what I'm currently doing. And just for the record, I too think crunch is typically a failure of management.

LOL, people have no idea. Looking forward the promised years of joy after my crunch ends this November

Any company that has to force crunch on employees is not running their buisness correctly.

Everything you said is baffling. I'm a self employed developer and often work 7 days a week on my project. Even though I am passionate about what I do, I get burn out, my body also doesn't care about my passion and being restricted to a desk so frequently is unhealthy. Its throws off my work/life balance and compromises my physical and mental health. I'm actively trying to find more efficient ways to work but unlike CD projekt Red my survival is dependant on getting this game out as quick as possible. For them a December release is not going to make the game any less successful or cause them to go bankrupt. What my passion might drive me  to do =/= what is healthy or what an employer should encourage.

A month of being overworked is not trivial, its not 7 days of extra work, its a month and a half where they will mostly likely be deprived of rest. If the CD respects the 9-5 work hours then that isn't so bad, but anyone in the industry will tell you its most likely 9-9, 12 hour  work days on top of the added weekend hours. 

"Is this really that bad considering the last three years or so of development they highly likely did not work to 100% of their potential every day?" Literally no one works 100% efficiency all the time and that is not what your wage is valued on. What I will say though is that you have zero idea about the hours they've been putting in their job, even when not working to 100% potential people still often put in overtime outside of crunch. Its the norm. And release day isn't the only deadline they work to. They have dozens of internal deadlines on a yearly basis that will cause people to work overtime.

Comparing this to complaining about a haircut is idiotic. If you want to talk about people not being able deal with Covid restrictions designed to benefit the health of the population, discuss that in another thread. What people are doing here is pushing for a better, healthier work environment and management of projects. Literally with your logic we would still be in the stone ages, because people "just got on with it". Meanwhile kids will essentially be without one their parents for over a month, over a video game which could simply come out a handful of weeks later at the cost of a tiny bit of the dozens of millions in profit they will end up making. Priorities dude.

It's just business.

By Labor Laws in Poland people work 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. You can not work more than 48 hours a week and that overtime 8 hours needs to be paid, if it's anything like Finland it's 150% salary.

Unless CDPR is breaking the law (which I doubt) this is pretty much a non-issue and not "crunch culture".

Except this goes against reports from their ex-staff and glass door reviews.

Wow I must live in a different world to most forum posters. When we were getting our business off the ground we worked from 6 in the morning till 6 at night, then took paper work home to finish. All extra jobs rolled over into the weekend. When there was extra work it was fit in, working late. Staff always got overtime rates and worked less hours in general, but pretty much everyone was happy for extra hours and money and realised when work needed doing it needed doing.

Now it is all, let's work 4 day weeks, super low flex hours. Lets spend half our time on social media and betting on our phones. Lets all earn much more money than we deserve for the work we put in and think you have done the boss a favour. Every boss who doesn't agree is obviously a tyrant. Without deadlines, things don't get done way too often. When you have a budget which last for only so long, then you are making losses, you put in a bit more work to get more work done. I wish i was living my working life now in this easy money utopia where everything magickly does itself and money comes from nowhere, but nobody told me it exist until now.

This is one of the development HELL for sure.

What is so baffling? When people have their dream job they should be grateful as most the time it really isn't stressful. We all have to put in over time sometimes. If you are on salary wage then that is the norm. No extra paid for overtime. Hell I am doing over time now at its just before midnight on a Friday (taking a break to read and reply on the forum now).

I don't know why 7 extra days is a big deal because simply put, it could be worst. For example deployed for military duty, then you are away 6-12 months from your kids, at least these devs get to see their kids. For me if you value that extra day (even if its a short period you miss out on), you are in the wrong job. With prestigious jobs like working for one of the best devs scarifies are made sometimes.

Hell I work a full time job (9-5) and then I run another company (6-12), that I hope will grow one day to maybe be my only job. Throw in the over time I do and I am going to bed between 2-3 am each night. I haven't been on a holiday in 6 years, and cash out my annual leave so I can continue to work and fund my other company. I have chosen to make sacrifices, no one asked me to do it, I don't want anyone feeling sorry for me, and guess what I don't complain about it as that is the path I chose. 

The same goes for this scenario, people chose to work for a AAA dev they know what they getting into. Compared to other jobs on offer in Poland they are way ahead and those who are complaining should just suck it up and get on with it or good luck finding a better job. TBH how many staff members are actually complain about having to work those extra 7 days? Or is it just outraged games calling CD Projekt the big bad wolf? Did they ask for a knight in shining armor to save them? or we all assuming they need saving because "crunch" is bad? Perhaps they don't feel the crunch? perhaps they love the crunch? I know it may be hard to believe but some people are wired that way to work hard hence why they took on that job to begin with.

We have also lost something that our parent and grandparents had, gratitude for the things we have in life. We spend far too much time complaining about everything. As an example, a lot of graduates (not all) these days think they are entitled to start on 6 figure salaries (well in my country) straight out of Uni instead of being grateful they got hired. With that attitude, when reality hits that no you don't start there you work your way up to there, they just complain all the time why am I being paid so little, everyone around me is making more money and I have to work more hours and make less. 

Now I am not saying we should go all the way back to stone ages (as you put it) where people worked 2-3 jobs to make ends meet. Just be grateful that in the grand scheme of things, most of us only have to work one job to make ends meet. We already work way less hours than previous generations and get paid better for it anyway, so a few over time days isn't going to end your life especially when you get paid well for it.

So yes I am saying once again suck it up, otherwise where does it stop? 3 day working weeks with 7 figure salaries being the norm? Then what is next? get paid not to work?