A box with the Sony PlayStation 4 Cyberpunk 2077 Collector’s Edition on the counter.
Alexander Sayganov | SOPA images | LightRocket via Getty Images
LONDON – Cyberpunk 2077 developers are pushing the release of new content for the game to focus on bug fixes and crashes.
Polish game developer and publisher CD Projekt launched the highly anticipated sci-fi epic last month. It has been the target of fierce criticism of the release of what many fans and critics saw as an unfinished game.
Cyberpunk was one of 2020’s most hyped big budget video games. But it has been plagued with a host of bugs and performance drops on older consoles like Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One.
CD Projekt tried to please fans with the promise of refunds and improvements to the game. But that didn’t stop Sony from removing Cyberpunk from its digital PlayStation Store, a move that many industry analysts say was unprecedented for a triple-A title.
Marcin Iwiński, co-founder of CD Projekt, apologized Wednesday in a video posted on the game’s YouTube channel.
“Despite good reviews on PC, the console version of Cyberpunk 2077 did not meet the quality standard we wanted to meet,” said Iwiński. “I and the entire leadership team deeply regret this and this video I am publicly convinced of that.”
“Please don’t blame any of our teams for what happened,” he added. “They are all incredibly talented and hardworking.
“Myself and the board are the ultimate decision makers, and our call was to release the game. Although, believe me, we never intended for anything like this to happen.”
Iwiński explained that many of the game’s problems on older hardware were the result of his great ambitions on PC. Cyberpunk is “massive in size,” he said, packing a “multitude of custom objects, interacting systems, and mechanics” into “one big city and a relatively load-free environment.”
“We made it even more difficult for ourselves by making the game look epic on PCs and then adapting it to consoles, especially old gens,” such as the PS4 and Xbox One, he added.
Iwiński said that CD Projekt’s planned release of free downloadable content, or DLC, to accompany the main game would be delayed as developers rush to patch the many glitches and crashes that players have experienced.
“We decided to focus on the major fixes and updates first and then we will release the DLCs,” said CD Projekt co-founder.
He added that versions of the game for next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft will be released in the second half of the year. Gamers can currently only play the PS4 and Xbox One versions of Cyberpunk on the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X systems.
Shares of CD Projekt rose 2% on Thursday morning. The game maker’s stock price is down about 38% since Cyberpunk was released on December 10th.
“We are treating this whole situation very seriously and are working hard to rectify it,” Iwiński said on Wednesday. “Our company’s guiding principles are still at the heart of what we do. We still want to make great games and have open communication with you our players.”
In addition to the controversy over Cyberpunk’s failed launch, CD Projekt has also faced allegations of “crunch culture,” a common problem in the games industry where developers work long hours to finish a game on time. Cyberpunk was delayed three times before it was released.
“The team is working to bring relevant fixes to the game without any mandatory renewal”, are you adding Red to CD Projekt Red here? said in a news update on Wednesday. “Avoiding crunch in all of our future projects is one of our top priorities.”