IS CYBERPUNK 2077'S FUTURE ALREADY DOOMED?
By John Saavedra
Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most highly anticipated games of 2020, has turned out to be a PR nightmare for CD Projekt. Can the studio right the ship in 2021?
Despite selling over 13 million copies in its first two weeks on shelves, few would call Cyberpunk 2077’s launch a success.
A launch full of bugs that rendered the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game almost unplayable, on top of a lack of transparency, turned CD Projekt into a gaming pariah overnight.
The last-gen versions ran so poorly that customers began demanding refunds. Sony even decided to remove the game from the PlayStation Store, one of the industry’s biggest digital marketplaces.
CD Projekt is now facing two class action lawsuits that allege that the studio misled investors and made false statements about the state of the game.
Weeks after the game’s launch, CD Projekt released an apology, explaining why Cyberpunk 2077 released with so many bugs, but some gamers felt the video was an attempt to skew the truth further...
CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwinski claimed in the video that the studio hadn’t found many of the bugs that plagued the final release of the game, but Bloomberg journalists uncovered otherwise.
The studio seemed to only make matters worse with the apology video, but it did try to push the conversation forward by offering a 2021 development roadmap of updates coming to the game this year.
Included in the roadmap are two new patches designed to fix more of the game’s performance issues and bugs, as well as free DLC and a next-gen upgrade for PS5 and XSX owners.
Before the game’s release, CD Projekt also promised a multiplayer mode for the game, which wasn’t mentioned in the roadmap but is reportedly still in the works.
But is the damage already done? Can CD Projekt’s upcoming updates really turn the ship around for Cyberpunk 2077?
Other highly anticipated games, like Final Fantasy XIV and No Man’s Sky, have bounced back after terrible first impressions out of the gate, but the road won’t be easy.
Final Fantasy XIV
And CD Projekt’s image as a truly consumer-friendly studio who values the gamers first and foremost has been shattered. It’s safe to say the studio lost a lot of good will on the road to 13 million copies sold. Was it worth it?