Cyberpunk tests turned out to be an even bigger scam »Vortex

A number of things are to blame for the Cyberpunk 2077 issues, which the game and players have faced not just since the game’s release. One of these should have been the problematic work of the testers, both internal CD Projekt and external teams and studios. In June, the name of the Romanian company Quantic Lab (not to be confused with the French studio Quantum Dream), which provided quality assurance (QA) externally or in short game tests and promised developers experienced testers, which ultimately did not happen. This topic we dedicated ourselves even then, in the same way subsequent reaction of the company. However, Quantic Lab employees have now revealed that the reality ended up being even worse than initial reports made it seem.

It was then that the Upper Echelon Gamers channel reported that Quantic Lab had knowingly lied about its skills and experience, a claim disproved by CEO Ștefan Șeicărescu, who founded the company in 2006. Quantic Lab should have offered more people than that. actually employed, as well as years of experience in game testing. At the same time, employees should have been obliged to report a certain number of errors on a daily basis, in order to report even the unimportant ones, which could lead to overlook some bugs and deficiencies, even of greater scope and greater importance. This in itself sounds like a serious problem, but the new findings take things even further. The Romanian journalist Doru Șupeală was also involved in the whole affair who, on the basis of the debates between the Romanian IT operators, collected other ambiguities, or the local newspaper Libertateawhose website described the case as “problems in Silicon Valley in Romania”.

Quantic Lab, an Embracer Group subsidiary, may not be well known outside of this case, but their work is unknowingly known to many players. In addition to Cyberpunk 2077, the studio also took part in testing The Witcher 3, as well as Vampyr, Cities Skylines, Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor, Wreckfest and Divinity: Original Sin 2. PC Gamer Magazine shared by ten Cyberpunk 2077 testers, while only two of them are already employed by Quantic Lab. One of them had already sent a 72-page internal document to the aforementioned Upper Echelon Gamers channel. Documents were repeatedly lied to, invoices were issued for non-existent work or, conversely, overwork and overwork of employees, emotional blackmail and verbal harassment also played a role.

In addition, the financial assessment ceased to correspond to the increasing volume of work, which, unlike the tasks and the content of the work, did not change. The testers were supposed to earn around 1450 lei, which is around 7200 crowns in conversion, the managers could reach around 16.5 thousand crowns. This is now confirmed by the current employee statements. While Quantic Lab was an ideal entry into the world of game development even for the inexperienced, the problem is that these inexperienced employees quickly “worked” to become team leaders. This was also the case with one of the employees interviewed, who stated that there could be up to 95% of equally inexperienced people in the company.

However, acceptance of two big games at once was key when Quantic Lab added NBA 2K21 to Cyberpunk 2077. Both of these games fully employed all employees, leaving other active projects without testers. Therefore, although Cyberpunk received the maximum deployment, it was not enough, since among the testers there were mainly inexperienced ones. This completely contradicted the commitment to CD Projekt, which was promised to experienced employees. “I think out of a team of 30 people, only 10 of them have had QA experience,” one employee told PC Gamer, adding that even those 10 experienced people hadn’t actually been involved in testing for more than a year, but later the original team expanded, but that didn’t help much. At the same time, the testers had to keep quiet about their “experiences” in front of CD Projekt. Another employee said CD Projekt still had the largest stake in Cyberpunk’s release status, but Quantic Lab’s work contributed to that. According to him, an experienced team would have saved the developers a lot of valuable time and errors.

I think out of a team of 30 people only 10 of them have had QA experience.

However, similar situations were also described in other projects, where the company also tried to create the impression of larger teams, while the projects were at most half occupied by testers. For this reason, the individual teams exchanged projects in different ways so that the work worked and they could manage them as they pleased. In addition, the team leaders maintained their position for several projects at the same time and had fewer testers available for each of them than needed. Also, their work should include communicating with clients and fictitious raising their teams. They did this mainly because they were concerned about their career prospects, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. Artificial expansion of teams worked, for example, by making employees log into their own accounts and at other times the accounts of those who previously or did not participate in the given project.

It was these practices that forced some employees not only to leave Quantic Lab, but to completely reject the playground or IT. For example, one of them said that the job completely disgusted him with games and games in general, even though he joined the company considering them his passion for him. Others see it as at least an experience and a CV entry, or a lesson on which companies and ways of working to avoid, due to the content of the job itself, unrealistic demands, the toxic work environment or salary assessment. Employees interviewed do not have much confidence that the situation in the company will change, even though Quantic Lab is now in the light of unwanted attention. However, it cannot be excluded that the company Embracer Group itself is interested in all this, which would certainly not be out of the question, since not only Cyberpunk 2077 was damaged, but also the employees themselves.