In a video, one of the co-founders of CD Projekt Red apologizes for the poor state of Cyberpunk 2077 and claims that they were unaware of many problems. According to an insider report from Bloomberg, this is not the case.
Cyberpunk 2077 was one of the most anticipated games in 2020. Accordingly, the disappointment was great when it finally launched and it turned out that the game was plagued by bugs and massive performance issues.
This is what the co-founder says: In a 5-minute video on YouTube, co-founder of CD Projekt Red, Marcin Iwiński, offered an apology to fans and investors.
Iwiński took the blame for the poor launch and the leadership of the company and apologized for it. Cyberpunk 2077 did not meet the quality standards they aimed for, according to Iwiński.
Furthermore, he also stated that the extent of the problems with Cyberpunk 2077 was not known to the company:
[…] Our tests did not reveal most of the issues that you experienced. […] We truly believed that we could deliver in the final Day-Zero patch.
According to an insider report by journalist Jason Schreier on Bloomberg, however, this was not the case. They were reportedly aware of the performance issues.
Focus on marketing and unrealistic deadlines
This is what the insider report says: The developers were well aware of the state in which Cyberpunk 2077 was released, and they also knew about the problems and bugs. There simply was not enough time to fix them.
In interviews with over 20 current and former employees of CD Projekt Red with Schreier, a picture emerged of a poorly coordinated development process.
The original goal was to release Cyberpunk 2077 before the next-gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft were announced. This way, CD Projekt Red would make revenues from the sales on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and later for the actual versions for PS5 and Xbox Series X.
However, based on the statements in the insider report, several issues emerged during development that made such an early release impossible. These included:
- The size of the project was underestimated. A fact that was also confirmed by co-founder Iwiński.
- Cyberpunk 2077 differs from the previous major project Witcher 3 in fundamental aspects such as perspective and setting. Therefore, necessary investments in new technologies and techniques followed, which the team was not familiar with, and which slowed down development.
- CD Projekt Red placed a large focus on marketing. According to the report, the development of the game suffered as a result.
- In 2016, there was a leadership change that led to significant changes in gameplay and story.
- Due to the Corona pandemic, the team had to work from home and did not have access to console development kits.
Most developers played the builds of Cyberpunk on their PCs at home. However, external tests showed “clear performance issues,” according to the insider report.
Even after CD Projekt Red announced that Cyberpunk had reached gold status and was ready for production, there were still significant problems.
- Parts of dialogues were missing
- some actions did not work correctly
- new severe bugs were continuously discovered
Jokes and memes about the release date in April 2020
Initially, the release of Cyberpunk 2077 was set for April 2020. The multiple delays of the game have caused quite a stir in the gaming community.
According to the Bloomberg report, some developers expressed disbelief about how they were supposed to finish the game in the given timeframe. One of the developers said he thought the date was a joke. Based on the progress at the time, they expected the game to be released in 2022.
Other employees of CD Projekt Red allegedly made jokes and memes about the game being delayed and placed bets on when that would happen.
During the last delay to December 10, the developers received only 3 weeks to fix as many bugs as possible. The result was a buggy game that led CD Projekt Red to apologize.
Now, however, the developer also faces a lawsuit from investors:
Class action lawsuit against Cyberpunk 2077: “Practically unplayable on PS4 and Xbox One”
