Sony refuses refunds for Cyberpunk 2077

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In a new twist, Sony representatives are refusing to grant the Cyberpunk 2077 refunds that CD Projekt Red has instructed its console players to request and instead say players specifically to wait. Reports on how Sony may or may not think about Cyperpunk 2077 have been back and forth, but there are screenshots claiming that the company is not handling discounts and in some cases telling players to wait until CD Projekt Red patches the game.

The optics of telling customers to rely on the good faith and release schedule of a company not currently known for either of those qualities is pretty dire, and the folks at Resetera are anything but happy.

This is CD Project Red’s fault, but Sony needs help

This situation exists because CD Projekt Red intentionally hid what the game looked like on consoles. It declined to test anything other than the PC version of the game for pre-review, which should have been a giant red flag in itself.

PS4 customers had reason to believe they were purchasing a game that would run on their hardware. The video below has been posted by the PlayStation Channel making it official Sony marketing. It is a brief look at the development with many shots from the game.

Leaving these purchases on is tantamount to saying it is acceptable for a major game publisher to perform this kind of stunt as long as the game sells enough copies. I don’t believe for a second that Microsoft or Sony have intentionally allowed this, but Sony’s official YouTube media channel has shared a number of videos, including gameplay videos. Those videos are apparently all from the PS4 Pro version of the game.

But therein lies the problem. CP2077 isn’t the only game to run poorly on the base consoles, but it’s easily the most talked about title ever launched with such a big gap between the base model and the more expensive machine. When Sony and Microsoft launched the PS4 Pro / Xbox One X, both companies promised that any game that could be played on the high-end console could also be played on the low-end. Cyberpunk 2077 is not playable on last-generation base consoles, according to multiple reviewers, including Digital Foundry.

So did those promises mean something or not?

Cyberpunk 2077, as it currently exists, is not playable. Sony and Microsoft have broken their promise to players – maybe not legal, but definitely ethical. As long as the two companies comply with refund requests, they can claim they themselves have been misled.

In this case, if you decline refunds, you get the unmistakable message that if you’re big enough, and you’re making enough of a first splash, you don’t actually have to build games that people can play. The two-hour view that Sony offers as a payback interval is based on the implied guarantee that you will make that decision based on personal taste. That is not the case here. This game is broken. No one playing it on PS4 will get the experience promised by Sony and CD Projekt Red. Gamers who pressed a title because they refused to believe that such a high-profile game could possibly be so broken do not deserve to be punished for daring to trust a major game publisher.

This is not an acceptable way to treat customers. Sony must either make an exception to its own policy, given the exceptional circumstances surrounding the game, or admit that it does not intend to punish developers who violate the policy.

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