Months after its long-awaited launch, Cyberpunk 2077 is still a strange and fascinating game to watch develop. This sci-fi title spent a good eight years getting CD Projekt Red fans excited, but unfortunately, it didn't stick the landing. Fans and critics were pretty upset with Cyberpunk 2077 at launch, and even now, the game is struggling to get back on its feet. New patches meant to enhance and fix the game are introducing new bugs, making it awfully difficult for CDPR to dig Cyberpunk out of its hole. It doesn't look like it's giving up on Cyberpunk 2077 anytime soon, perhaps because it's learned a lesson that it's trying to take to heart.
Cyberpunk 2077 is the strongest evidence from the last few months that sometimes a release delay is the best thing that can happen to a game. It's natural that fans want to see exciting titles release as soon as possible -- or at least on the first launch date announced -- but the unfortunate truth is that there's all kinds of pitfalls that a game can stumble into during development. It's consistently been proven that it's best for games to take it slow and avoid as many obstacles as possible, especially for AAA titles like Cyberpunk 2077 that have high expectations to meet.
Cyberpunk's Journey to Release
Cyberpunk 2077 has an interesting relationship with release dates. In spite of the game's disappointing state at release, it actually faced a lot of delays in development. CD Projekt Red originally wanted Cyberpunk 2077 to release in April of 2020, but it pushed back the game three different times over the course of the year, until finally it released on December 10th. CDPR fans got increasingly annoyed with the studio over its promises that Cyberpunk 2077 wouldn't be delayed anymore, only to follow those claims with another delay. CDPR said all the delays were made for the health of the game, but the quality of delays matters more than their quantity.
The problem with Cyberpunk 2077's delays in late 2020 is that they were actually pretty minor delays meant to give CDPR a little extra time to rush the final things that needed doing. It's come to light that the habitual video game industry sin of crunch time came about at the tail end of Cyberpunk 2077's development, putting developers under extreme duress as they tried to quickly piece the game together. As Cyberpunk 2077's buggy launch demonstrated, the rush didn't pay off. While it got the game onto store shelves as soon as possible, it didn't turn out to be very helpful otherwise.
A Lesson for the Industry
CD Projekt Red is definitely upset with itself for handling the development of Cyberpunk 2077 the way it did. Fans are hoping that it's learned its lesson, and that the next time it delays a game, it'll actually delay it by enough time to get all the game's facets done at a manageable pace. It's not just CDPR that's learning from this, though. The whole video game industry has seen the importance of being honest with a game's state of development and delaying it as much as needed, not as little as possible.
It remains to be seen where Cyberpunk 2077 will go in the long term. Many fans will probably be weighing it on a scale against No Man's Sky, the reigning king of comebacks. No Man's Sky was also humbled by the experience of a premature release and became stronger from earning back the trust of fans. Now it's CDPR's turn to do the same. Cyberpunk 2077 has surely made CDPR swallow the hard pill of backlash. It can't rewind the clocks and undo its attempt to rush the game; it can only do its best to patch the game to a state that fans are happier with. Hopefully the next time CDPR tries something as ambitious as Cyberpunk 2077, it lets the game catch its breath in development rather than hurrying to the finish line.
Cyberpunk 2077 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.