New report suggests CDPR staff knew Cyberpunk 2077 wasnt ready for release

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A new report that details Cyberpunk 2077 (opens in new tab)‘s “disastrous rollout” alleges that many CD Projekt Red staff were aware the game wasn’t ready to be released.

Bloomberg (opens in new tab) ($/£) reports that a number of current and former CDPR staff “depict a development process marred by unchecked ambition, poor planning, and technical shortcomings”, alleging the team was aware of the issues ahead of release. 

It further alleges that the 2018 E3 demo was “almost entirely fake”.

“Interviews with more than 20 current and former CD Projekt staff, most of whom requested anonymity so as not to risk their careers, depict a development process marred by unchecked ambition, poor planning and technical shortcomings,” Bloomberg reports.

“Employees, discussing the game’s creation for the first time, described a company that focused on marketing at the expense of development, and an unrealistic timeline that pressured some into working extensive overtime long before the final push.”

As we summarised at the time (opens in new tab), Cyberpunk 2077 suffered a fairly disastrous launch on both PS4 and Xbox One. After reassuring players that the game ran “surprisingly well (opens in new tab)” on last-gen platforms, CD Projekt Red leadership apologised for the bug-riddled launch of the game (opens in new tab) on both platforms, after players encountered numerous bugs, glitches, and visual downgrades. CD Projekt Red leadership said the cost of fixing Cyberpunk 2077 on these platforms was “irrelevant (opens in new tab)” compared to the hit their reputation has taken over the launch.

Consequently, Sony pulled Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store (opens in new tab) “until further notice” and began offering refunds to anyone that bought Cyberpunk 2077 on the PlayStation Store and wanted their money back. Microsoft subsequently added a warning to its Xbox storefront (opens in new tab), too. 

In a tweet shared after Bloomberg’s report was published, CDPR’s Adam Badowski challenged many of the article’s assertions, stating he wouldn’t call talking with 20 people as “most of the 500-people staff” the company employed and insisted that missing features is “part of the creation process”. He also stated that the company “owned up” to the old-gen console issues, and said, “we are proud of Cyberpunk 2077 as a game and artistic vision”. The full rebuttal can be read below. 

I’ve read your piece and tweets, thank you for the read. I have some thoughts. https://t.co/T3qACdrnwM pic.twitter.com/wuzy5lXoqQJanuary 16, 2021

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To make matters worse, CD Projekt investors unhappy at the performance of Cyberpunk 2077 were contemplating legal action against the company (opens in new tab) and now, it seems a law firm in New York has gone ahead and filed a class-action lawsuit and filed for damages on behalf of CD Projekt investors (opens in new tab).

While a couple of weeks back, during an emergency meeting, CDPR president Adam Kiciński said that it was “too early to judge” what would happened to the game’s DLC (opens in new tab) and multiplayer mode (opens in new tab), free DLC is coming to Cyberpunk 2077 in “early” 2021 (opens in new tab). 

Here are some new games coming in 2021 (opens in new tab) to get pumped for.