For better or worse, the launch state of Cyberpunk 2077 is now serving as a cautionary tale to many developers and publishers. Initially, blame was flung towards top management as CD Projekt for green-lighting the game’s launch despite the state that it was in, as well as the finance part of the company behind the scenes. While that may have been partially true, it is alleged that another major component has escaped blame this whole time. And it’s the third party QA company that did the testing work on the game, known as Quantic Labs.
YouTuber Upper Echelon Gamers claims in a video that the company has mislead CD Projekt management about the services it was providing to Cyberpunk 2077. These bits of information comes from a whistleblower from within Quantic Labs, who has provided a 72-page document with confidential info as proof of their status as an insider.
One major allegation made against Quantic Labs is that it misrepresented the team that will be working on Cyberpunk 2077 to CD Projekt. The former promised a team of senior staff, some of whom the latter assumed have also worked on The Witcher 3 prior. The claim is that said senior staff have already left the company, and the ones doing testing for the upcoming game were juniors with less than a year’s experience, some with less than six months.
Another major allegation made was the fact that Quantic Labs had a daily quota of reported bugs per QA tester, the exact figure being 10 a day. Which may seem like a good idea on paper. But in practice, this led to the dev team at CDPR getting flooded by negligible bugs, like graphical clipping. The quota also meant that QA testers didn’t have time to test more severe bugs like broken quest lines.
The last major allegation made against Quantic Labs is that the company would make false claims about team size to score or extend contracts. This not only overworks staff, but also gives potential clients a false impression as to a realistic deliverable work timeline. Which, in turn, leads to strained relationships with partners, including CDPR.
In addition to these allegations, the report goes on to mention an oppressive work environment which keeps corporate malpractice hidden. For what it’s worth, Quantic Lab was acquired by THQ Nordic, which makes it under the Embracer Group umbrella. The video report goes into a lot more detail, and you can watch it by hitting the link below.
(Source: Upper Echelon Gamers / YouTube)
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