This blog post is a few weeks too late, but every time I went to write it another new crazy development emerged. I think that things have finally settled down enough to try and cover the launch of Cyberpunk 2077.
First announced in 2012, it was in 2013 that the public was treated to a teaser trailer for a mysterious new game by CD Projekt Red, creators of the hugely popular Witcher video game adaptations. The game was of course Cyberpunk 2077, since that time the hype grew to a level that any game would have trouble delivering on. Fortunately for the Polish developer and gamers at large the game would be met with a decent critical reception. Currently the game sits at 86 percent on Metacritic.
The storyline and side quests have been heavily praised while the main drawback has been the technical aspects, bugs, crashes and performance on various levels of hardware. Two things stuck out to me when the reviews dropped, they were that only the PC version was available and reviewers weren’t allowed to use their own footage in their videos. As this was announced and marketed as a PS4 and Xbox One game alongside PC the lack of reviews for the 8th generation consoles gave me pause. Coupled with the lack of footage things kind of seemed suspect. To me that read as if the game might be buggy more so than CD Projekt Red didn’t want things spoiled similar to how Naughty Dog asked for review footage to be limited for The Last of Us Part II.
With these trepidations I decided against pre ordering for my PS4 or Xbox until some actual reviews came out for those consoles. I am extremely glad I did wait as it turns out the lack of media coverage was intentional as to not draw attention to the lackluster state the game was in for consoles. From crashes, to reports of the game completely bricking some PS4s this launch has been nothing short of a disaster.
While the people I know who are playing on PC are enjoying their experience the same can not be said for those who picked up their copy on console. Even players trying to play PS4 versions on their PS5s are experiencing game breaking issues. What makes this all the more ironic is before the release of Cyberpunk CD Projekt Red had made a name for themselves as being the “good guys” of the industry. In stark defiance to industry “villains” like Electronic Arts or Ubisoft, CD Projekt Red would never make you pay for DLC or microtransactions.
These statements now seem like a carefully constructed narrative focused on gaining as much good will as possible only to cash it out with the release of Cyberpunk. A tactic that seems to have worked in the short term. In an Investor’s report CD Projekt Red said “based on reports obtained from digital distribution platforms and data collected from physical distributors, it estimates that by 20 December inclusive gamers have purchased over 13 million copies of Cyberpunk 2077.”
These numbers are most impressive when you consider they include refunds, in fact let’s talk about refunds. Initially the company asked disappointed players to return their copies if they weren’t happy with the final product. One issue with this was that today games are often purchased digitally. Sony and Microsoft have their own policies when it comes to when games can be returned. Naturally CD Projekt Red didn’t run their statement by them. Which resulted in more controversy and clarification and in my opinion more likely than not resulted in Sony delisting the title from their digital storefront all together.
This is an absolutely wild move, we’ve seen games struggle with poor releases. Famously Fallout 76 and Anthem both failed to deliver on promises even after months of updates. Though neither of them were taken off a storefront. Either Sony decided that Cyberpunk was borderline unplayable or the handling of the situation by CD Projekt Red prompted Sony to cut them off all together. Truly an insane development.
Adding to the insanity, investor Andrew Trampe filed a class action lawsuit against CD Projekt Red on behalf of himself and other investors who were misled by false statements surrounding the state and quality of the game. The full lawsuit can be read here. CD Projekt Red for their part has said per Bloomberg it will “defend itself ‘vigorously against any such claims.” This isn’t even touching the fact that Bloomberg also reported that despite saying the studio would avoid “Crunch” a practice in which developers are forced to work overtime in order to meet deadlines, they instead forced their workers to participate in it for months before the game was released.
PC Players aren’t entirely out of the woods as it was reported and later confirmed by CD Projekt Red that save files over 8 Mbs would become corrupted. This issue has been remedied in a patch, but the save files that were corrupted are gone forever. An issue for players who had obviously put a lot of time and effort into making their saved games that big in the first place.
With all this said the jury is still out on where the game will land. Many longtime RPG gamers will remind us that expansive open world epics often release in semi broken states. If you look at articles from 2015 you can see many complaints about Fallout 4 or even the Witcher 3 being buggy or otherwise poorly optimized. After years of patches and fixes they are remembered fondly as examples of how great games can be. For me I think I’ll hold on for a little while longer before jumping into my own adventure in Night City. Even then it will be on PC as I don’t believe the 8th generation copies will ever meet the expectations that began over 8 years ago when we first got a hint at what Cyberpunk 2077 could be.
For more gaming news you can follow us on Youtube at Wicked Good Everything
Follow Brian on Twitter
No comments:
Post a Comment