The highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 has been delayed 21 days and will now be released on December 10. This is according to a post on the game's official Twitter page, which cites difficulties in quality testing on nine different devices during the Covid-19 pandemic.

"The biggest challenge for us right now is to ship the game on current-gen, next-gen, and PC at the same time, which requires us to prepare and test 9 versions (Xbox One/X, Xbox Series S/X compatibility, PS4/Pro, PS5 compatibility, PC, Stadia) .

This generation of consoles, like the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro, are undergoing mid-cycle refreshes, which will require additional developer resources to ensure that games can run on more devices.

The biggest hurdle is getting games to run smoothly on the original Xbox One and PS4 released in 2013, which simply have less horsepower to run games efficiently compared to the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro. Xbox Series X and PS5 are just around the corner. Now that the Xbox Series X and PS5 are imminent, the situation is even more complicated.

This post states that even a 21-day delay makes a huge difference in final quality.

The team at CD Projekt Red has also been criticized for putting its employees through a difficult crunch in order to release the game on time. A crunch is when employees are forced to work long overtime hours for weeks on end to complete a project, after the studio blustered that it would forgo the crunch in the development of Cyberpunk 2077.

The six-day work week has been mandatory since late September, but according to Bloomberg, "some staff had already been working nights and weekends for more than a year."

The effects of long work hours go beyond sleep deprivation and increased fatigue. High stress caused developers to develop ulcers and vomit blood. It is exacerbated by an industry that employs passionate artists and developers who tend to be willing to make sacrifices to achieve their ultimate vision.

Unlike other studios, however, CD Projekt Red has a profit-sharing model with its staff. Given that 10% of profits are returned to developers, this model helps to blunt the crunch and compensate employees for their long hours.