‘Cyberpunk 2077’ QA Studio Responds To Whistleblower Accusations

Games ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ QA Studio Responds To Whistleblower Accusations Paul Tassi Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet. New! Follow this author to improve your content experience.

Got it! Jun 28, 2022, 09:48am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Cyberpunk 2077 CDPR This past week, a whistleblower turned over information to YouTuber U pper Echelon Gaming that claimed a CDPR QA contract studio, Quantic Lab, was a major contributor to the issues Cyberpunk 2077 had at launch. The 72 page document made claims that Quantic Lab lied about the size and seniority of the team, and that a bug reporting quota for its testers meant that CDPR was sent thousands of less-than-relevant bugs, taking away time from more important issues that were left in the game at launch. After contacting Quantic Dream for their statement in response to the allegations, I received the following from their CEO, Stefan Seicarescu.

It…does not fully address the allegations, but here it is in its entirety: “Concerning the article published in Forbes on June 26th, Quantic Lab’s would like to clarify the following: The video published on social media as mentioned in your article starts with incorrect statements about Quantic Lab’s history. There seems to be a lack of understanding in the process of how a game is tested before its release to the market. Quantic Lab was founded in 2006 with a team of twelve, fully focused on Quality Assurance, and has since then grown into a leading QA company with more than 60 active clients, and more than 400 employees in 3 office locations in Romania.

Quantic Lab supports over 200 projects per year from several global leading publishers and continues to maintain a quality comes first approach to all the work we undertake. MORE FOR YOU ‘Demon Slayer’ Season 2 Finally Has An Actual 2021 Release Date Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Not A Sure Thing, Says Director ‘Genshin Impact’ Still Refuses To Increase Anniversary Rewards, Despite Fan Outcry All our customer agreements are confidential but in general, global publishers are working with several QA outsourcing companies, not depending solely on one, in addition to internal QA resources at developer level in most cases. Each project we undertake is unique with regard project requirements.

Project direction is agreed and adjusted accordingly as per real time requirements with our clients. Quantic Lab always strives to work with transparency and integrity with our industry partners. ” So, out of everything brought up in the Upper Echelon Gaming video via the whistleblower report, they just say there are issues with “incorrect statements” about Quantic Lab’s history, and that UEG gets some things wrong about QA testing.

Cyberpunk 2077 CDPR They go on to say that a game like Cyberpunk 2077 would have CDPR not working with one QA studio only. And that’s kind of all this says. I followed up with them to press them on the specific claims about the team size, seniority and bug quotas, as those are not addressed here at all.

It is worth noting, however, that after the whistleblower report came out, other sources reportedly from within CDPR didn’t buy the idea that what was wrong with Cyberpunk at launch was the result of just one QA studio: The idea here is that ultimately, the final result still falls on CDPR and management itself, and it seems to be saying something similar to the Quantic Lab statement, that QA testing relies on multiple external partners and internal testers. Even if there was an issue with one of them (and Quantic Lab isn’t really disputing those claims at the moment) that would not be responsible for the state of Cyberpunk 2077 at launch, and ultimately, it’s still CDPR’s management’s call to release the game with those bugs intact. I’m still waiting to hear back directly from CDPR itself, and will update if I do.

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