CD Projekt RED has been consistently under fire since the release of Cyberpunk 2077 this month. CD Projekt Red's latest neo-futuristic RPG was easily the most anticipated release of 2020, with many expecting a RPG on par with the incredible open world RPG of The Witcher 3. When reviewers finally got a hold of Cyberpunk 2077, the reception was generally favorable, despite all reviewers only receiving a PC review code. Some had noted the various amount of bugs in the game, but those paled in comparison to what the last-gen console release would look like. Performance issues and bugs all around made Cyberpunk 2077 virtually unplayable on PS4/Xbox One, at least according to many.
It may come as no surprise that CD Projekt is now being sued on behalf of the company's investors in a class action lawsuit. In the wake of Cyberpunk 2077's broken and near-disastrous launch on last-gen systems, Europe's biggest gaming company has lost billions of dollars as CD Projekt's stocks have tanked. As it turned out, many of the suspicions and fears born from the game's numerous delays ended up being very real. Now, it seems, investors are just as angry as the players on last-gen, who received a game that was fundamentally broken compared to PC and next-gen platforms.
Claims Against CD Projekt for Cyberpunk 2077's Botched Last-Gen Release
Of course, Cyberpunk's issues are common knowledge at this point, but the source of this lawsuit is a direct result of Cyberpunk 2077's last-gen debacle. To put it into perspective, where Cyberpunk 2077 on PC has quest-breaking and programming bugs that range from hilarious to annoying, Cyberpunk 2077 on last-gen consoles has that and more. Serious performance degradation in comparison to the next-gen versions, compounded with the aforementioned bugs, makes Cyberpunk 2077 virtually unplayable on PS4/Xbox One. Enemy AI behavior is unreactive, texture streaming/loading speeds are unacceptable, and the framerate is sub-30 FPS more often than not.
This is where Rosen Law Firm comes in: On Christmas Eve, the firm posted a press release announcing it had filed the class action lawsuit on behalf of purchasers of securities of CD Projekt S.A., the parent company behind the CD Projekt Red development studio. Any investors who purchased stock in the company between January 16 and December 17 of 2020 are eligible to join the class action suit. According to Rosen Law Firm, defendants (meaning CD Projekt executives) deliberately misled investors on the state of Cyberpunk 2077's development, citing the game was "virtually unplayable on the current-generation Xbox or PlayStation systems."
What the Suit Means for Players and CD Projekt Red
Specifically, according to the suit, CD Projekt's statements throughout that class period of January to December were "materially false and misleading." The suit also notes Cyberpunk 2077's removal from digital stores on PlayStation and Xbox, as well as CD Projekt's promise to fulfill refunds of the game, as reasons to pursue legal action. Not to mention CD Projekt's reputational harm as a result of the botched launch, with the lawsuit claiming all of these reasons resulted in damages for investors.
At the moment, no class has been certified for the lawsuit, so it may not necessarily become class action. The U.S. court must certify that there's a sizable group of investors with similar claims in order to make the suit eligible for class action. The important takeaway from this is that CD Projekt could be in a much larger financial predicament in the future, despite Cyberpunk 2077 profiting within a day of its release. Obviously, customer refunds will take a while to go through and could change CD Projekt's financial situation greatly, but a financial securities lawsuit will take even longer. Depending on the amount of plaintiffs that join the lawsuit, CD Projekt may take a big hit.
This lawsuit doesn't particularly have any effect on consumers who purchased Cyberpunk 2077 already, but it could seriously impact the CD Projekt Red studio and its parent company publisher as well. Assuming enough plaintiffs come together to back this class action lawsuit, this still won't just be an overnight collapse of CD Projekt. Business lawsuits involving financial securities and investors are typically years-long affairs, especially if they're class action lawsuits. The future and reputation of CD Projekt Red is thrown further into doubt, assuming this lawsuit comes to fruition.
Cyberpunk 2077 is available now on PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.