After a week of refunds, apologies and patches, CD Projekt Red announced yesterday that its open world sci-fi RPG Cyberpunk 2077 nevertheless, a total of more than 13 million copies have been sold since its release on December 10th. This is despite the game’s unsuccessful performance on last-gen consoles and some low-end PCs, as well as the allegedly overtime-driven working conditions that was going to make it.
“[CDPR] hereby announces that, based on reports obtained from digital distribution platforms and data collected from physical distributors, it estimates that gamers will have purchased more than 13 million copies of Cyberpunk 2077 by December 20, ” the company wrote in a statement to investors. “This figure represents the estimated volume of retail sales across all hardware platforms (taking into account returns submitted by retail customers in brick and mortar stores and digital storefronts), ie the” resale figure “, minus all refund requests sent directly to the company on the date of publication of this report as part of the ‘Help Me Refund’ campaign. “
Accurate readers will recognize some apparent caveats in this announcement, the largest of which is that the 13 million figure appears to be an estimate rather than based strictly on actual existing sales data. The statement also says it represents total sales minus all refunds requested, but it’s not clear whether that reflects the bulk of all refunds or just ones retailers have had time to report so far. CDPR did not immediately respond to a request for comment to clarify its comments.
CDPR first apologized for the state of the game on December 14, suggesting anyone disappointed in how Cyberpunk 2077 played can get a refund. This turned out to be difficulthowever, as Sony and Microsoft digital storefronts do not necessarily allow refunds for games that have already been played. On December 17, Sony had taken the game completely from PlayStation Store, ensuring refunds across the board. This no questions asked refund option quickly expanded also on Microsoft’s platform, followed by CDPR itself and even retailers like Best Buy. Earlier this week, Kotaku even reported GameStop stores were told to refund Cyberpunk 2077 customers, even if they had already opened and played the game.
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In that context, 13 million doesn’t sound bad at all for a game whose rollout The New York Times called recently “One of the most visible disasters in video game history.” Just before the game was released, CDPR announced it was pre-ordered 8 million times, and reported on December 11 that already had pre-orders alone let it break on the development and marketing costs of the game. Five million more sold since launch for a game whose litany of glitches has gone viral and whose console version is currently under a 60 on Metacritic is more than most games will ever sell. In comparison, it took Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order several months to reach 10 million copies sold.
Still, apparently they aren’t as many sales as the shareholders had hoped. Bloomberg reports CDPR’s stock fell 3.7% after the news, a total of 42% lower than where it peaked earlier in the month.