I'm not saying there should be crunch but there is limited money (no idea for The Witcher). If you get funding for X amount of money you calculate your salaries

I'm not saying there should be crunch but there is limited money (no idea for The Witcher). If you get funding for X amount of money you calculate your salaries plus overhead and you have a deadline. Miss the deadline then you renegotiate for more funding but at some point the funders will just pull the plug and your team are out of jobs. It's unrealistic to believe there's no reason for deadlines. For a FAANG company, sure, they're making so much money they can -- mostly -- afford to do things without deadlines but few video game studios are at a level of funding that they can spend another 3, 6, 12, months. The internet claims Cyberpunk 2077 had 500 to 5000 people working on it. I'm sure that 5000 number is not full time but it's not hard to believe the 500 number. Just paying 500 people $15 an hour, 40 hours a week $1.2 million a month, not counting rent/power/taxes etc... And of course some large percent of those people are probably getting closer or $30 per hour $60k yearly salary) to $60 per hour ($120k a year salary) Witcher3 claims 150-250 employees so your delay, shipping October instead of May is easily $4 million needed and I suspect that number is low. $12 million if it took an extra year as you suggested and that's a low-ball estimate.