Horizon Forbidden West was delayed to avoid crunch

The long-awaited Horizon Forbidden West is released. The idea was that we would have to revisit Aloy and the gang as early as 2021, but the game was delayed until now instead. According to a Dutch newspaper NU, the game was delayed to avoid "crunch" and overtime for the workers. The newspaper interviewed Mathijs de Jonge and he said this:

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That happens very rarely with us. We are aware of the disadvantages of crunching, so we take this into account a lot in our planning,

Forbidden West might have been released at the end of last year, but then we might have had to work overtime. People should also be able to relax and take a vacation, [and] to be with family and friends. That also played a part in the decision to release the game now.

 

The so-called "cruch culture" is a hot topic in the gaming world that also gets a lot of criticism. There has been a tradition that you basically work day and night the last weeks (sometimes months) to get the projects done,  at the expense of workers' health.