Many were upset about buying Cyberpunk 2077 in December 2020. The game ran so poorly on consoles that it was even removed from the PS Store. But one person was even more upset than the average buyers. The YouTuber Willyrex. He wanted to be particularly clever and ended up failing spectacularly.
What unfair advantage did Willyrex have?
- The YouTuber Willyrex has been in the business since 2011 and streams like some Spanish-speaking YouTubers from Andorra, which is their Madeira. This saves on taxes.
- As a YouTuber, Willyrex could secure a new copy of Cyberpunk 2077 before many others. The game was released on December 10, 2020, and was a real hot topic from the start.
- Willyrex obtained a copy of the game for PC. Big influencers receive, like gaming journalists in some cases, such “review versions” of a game even before the release from the manufacturer.
“I thought this is Free Money”
That was his mistake: As Willyrex recounts in a podcast, he played Cyberpunk 2077 before the release and thought it was a great game. He wanted to be particularly clever:
“I told myself, I need to buy stocks. I have an advantage. That’s the way to cheat.”
After all, the motto of the YouTuber is “Use the bug to your advantage.”
So he bought stocks for $100,000 and said: “Finally free money.”
YouTuber buys stocks at absolute peak price
What was the problem? What Willyrex didn’t know back then: The PC version of Cyberpunk 2077 was running fine, but the console version was a disgrace and plunged the game and the company distributing it into a crisis. On December 18, Cyberpunk 2077 was even removed from the PS Store.
He says:
The game came out 3 or 4 days later and it was the only game in history that was removed from the PlayStation Store. I had played it on PC, it ran perfectly, maximum quality, they delivered everything they promised.
The stock of CD Projekt Red crashed right after Willyrex bought it. Because the stock was riding high in anticipation that Cyberpunk 2077 would become the game of the year 2020 and generate incredible revenue:
Stock crashes by 50% after one month
If he bought the stocks, as he says, 3 or 4 days before the release, he must have paid about $120 per share. Just 7 days later, the stock stood at only 86%. About a month later, on January 8, the stock had dropped to $65. Today, the stock is worth about $28.
Depending on exactly when he sold them, he probably lost several tens of thousands of dollars. Willyrex doesn’t specify how much he lost exactly. He refers to it as a “setback.”
His tactic of using every advantage didn’t work out at all.
Other YouTubers also have problems with money and their expenses:
Twitch streamer Tanzverbot says he is broke: Bought shirts for 400 euros that don’t even fit him
