Many game companies around the world use the practice of hiring third-party studios to work on projects. They are often engaged in art, models, sounds and other things. Sometimes even testing games.
For example, CD Projekt Red did a similar thing when he was hired for testing Cyberpunk 2077 Romanian company Quantic Lab. A large investigation into this was released by PCGamer.
Main material:
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10 people replied to reporters: two former and eight current employees of the company
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The studio tested Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Necromunda Hired Gun, Cities Skylines, and many other games. The main issues involved Cyberpunk 2077 and NBA 2K21
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The company didn’t always have the right number of project testers, often lied to employers
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The right amount of people worked on Cyberpunk 2077 and NBA 2K21, but they have been transferred from other projects
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The CDPR required experienced staff to manage the tests, but this clause was not met. For example, as one of the employees noticed that at one point 30 people worked on the game and only 10 of them had experience, but less than a year
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CDPR has often complained about the quality of the company’s work
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The team, in order to meet the standard, often sent in small reports of graphical problems, but did not investigate any major mission bugs.
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The situation with NBA 2K21 was similar
As a result, CDPR refused to partner with Quantic Lab after the contract expired. The Poles had other outsourced studios in addition to their own quality department, but about a third of the tests were related to Romanian colleagues.
Quantic Lab employees themselves claimed that the studio has a toxic job, for which they pay very little money: 300 euros a month at the beginning. It is very difficult to live with this money in Romania.
