Cyberpunk 2077 promised itself as a new frontier for RPG games and claimed to have the immersion of popular titles like Red Dead Redemption 2. It was so anticipated that it won over 100 awards at E3 2018, and this excitement would continue to the E3 trade show the year after. However, reviewers began to suspect something was up when they were limited to what they could write about or show in their reviews. This was quickly revealed when Cyberpunk 2077 released to the public and the glaring amount of bugs were revealed. The game barely ran on last-gen consoles, and even on high-end PCs it experienced missing textures and assets, among other issues.

While the quality of the story and characters were highly praised, the game was sometimes missing those favored NPCs entirely. The list of bugs and issues was so bad that it forced the PlayStation Store to remove Cyberpunk 2077 from its digital shelves. It is hard to imagine how the launch could've gone worse for CD Projekt Red, as it was a disastrous event that caused the game's developers and company executives to receive severe backlash from the consumer base. The seemingly flawless reputation of CD Projekt Red had been forever tainted, at least for now.

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Cyberpunk 2077: Thrice Delayed, Once Bitten

Cover art for Cyberpunk 2077 showing a red stock market arrow pointing down.

Before it was released, it was rumored that the developers were being forced to work long hours and six-day weeks in order to complete the game by its December 10, 2020 release date. Fans were skeptical when it was announced that reviewers were only allowed to do so on PC, and this began to erode the trust in Cyberpunk 2077. When the game fully released, the gaming community made the assumption this was to hide the bugs and missing assets from reviewers. Even after three delays and forcing the developers to cram, the game still disappointed a large amount of players.

A big reason for the issues with Cyberpunk 2077 seems to come from CD Projekt's management overestimating the amount of time it would take to make a game of this scope. That being said, the game had twice as many developers as The Witcher 3, so it's curious why that manpower couldn't pull it off. The CD Projekt Co-CEO came out in a video and stated that the real mistake came from porting a PC game to older consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One. While CD Projekt Red has promised to fix the game, some fans have lost trust and instead opted for a return of their hard-earned money.

CD Projekt Red's Poor Treatment of Staff

CD Projekt Red crunch

In the final months of Cyberpunk 2077's development, management made game developers crunch for extremely long shifts for at least six days a week. This comes after having promised to be a no-crunch studio shortly before. Staff were also told that their bonuses would be tied to the review scores of the game, but this was dismissed in lieu of giving the full raises regardless. This follows a trend of high-turnover at CD Projekt Red's studios. While the company blames Covid-19 for the issues in development and release, this follows a much larger trend of poor treatment of employees that has become common in AAA development.

Apparently this was only part of the issue where staff were mistreated, as it seems there was an issue with the senior staff punching down. Recently, the company's VP of Game Development left amidst allegations he had been bullying other members of staff. There haven't been any details about what these allegations of abuse entail, but some suspect it may have to do with the crunch that developers were forced to undertake in the final months.

Post-Release Shenanigans

CD Projekt Red's problems were only beginning when the game released. On February 8th, 2021, CD Projekt Red announced on its Twitter feed that it had been the victim of a targeted cyber attack. The hackers were able to steal a number of source code from several games (including Cyberpunk 2077) before attempting to auction them back to the developer. One cybersecurity expert even came out and said they suspected the hack could be an inside job, since the developers were getting so much grief after crunch conditions. The hackers ended up selling the data to someone outside of CD Projekt Red.

Something that has been sort of a let down since Cyberpunk 2077's release is the news that the game's multiplayer might not make it. Although it was announced alongside the base game as a standalone project, details about what the mode might look like have been few. At a recent strategy presentation, CD Projekt Red announced that the Cyberpunk 2077 multiplayer game would be changing course. Although CD Projekt didn't announce whether this meant the game was canceled, investors and players were confused by the publisher's wording.

Since its disastrous release, CD Projekt Red has promised that it is devoted to improving the game to what was initially promised. The game has since released a few large updates to fix these issues, but has had just as many issues with hackers and letting go of promises. To a lot of fans, the damage has already been done. Only time will tell if Cyberpunk 2077 can crawl out of its hole and place itself amongst the redemption stories of games like No Man's Sky. That might be the only way CD Projekt Red saves its reputation.

Cyberpunk 2077 is currently available for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Stadia with PS5 and Xbox Series X/S updates in development.

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