In an initial statement, Sony offered a refund for the game and added: “[Sony Interactive Entertainment] will also remove Cyberpunk 2077 from PlayStation Store until further notice. “This implied that the decision was from Sony, but a later statement by CD Projekt Red said the decision came out of a” discussion “with Sony about refunds. I never knew for sure who the decision was to withdraw the game from sale.No specific reasoning was given for removing the game (for reference, it was never removed on the Xbox, but refunds were extended), although speculation suggests that the decision allowed Sony’s somewhat restrictive refund policies to be circumvented. Whatever the underlying cause, the removal was a totally unprecedented move for a game as well-known as Cyberpunk, and brought with it a number of other questions, most of which remain unanswered more than three months later.
The main questions are: “When will it be back on sale and what will it take to make it happen?” Neither Sony nor CD Projekt has discussed specific answers to these questions since December, with the closest we come to this CDPR statement: “We are working hard to bring Cyberpunk 2077 back to PlayStation Store as soon as possible.”
IGN contacted Sony and CD Projekt Red ahead of the scheduled date to inquire about plans to have the game re-listed, and received no response from either party, despite several requests.In terms of clues, the best we have to go on is the previously declared CD Projekt Red script for game updates. When it first apologized for the state of the release version, CD Projekt set a timeline including two major patches, which, together, “should fix the most important issues that players are facing on the next generation consoles”. The second of these patches, version 1.2, was later postponed after a cyber attack in the studio, but we recently heard about its changes, which means that it is probably close. It is possible that, if the latest generation versions are considered perfect, the game may be sold again on PlayStation as soon as the patch arrives.
However, it may also be that Sony chooses to make a new listing until the game is updated for the PS5 as well. A next generation version of the game – bringing it closer to the PC release – is planned for the second half of 2021, with free updates for those who purchased the game in the last generation. It is possible that Sony (or CD Projekt Red) wants to re-list the game as soon as it is in what should be its final form.
The fact that there is speculation about this is quite surprising. That CD Projekt Red would remain silent about when players could buy their marquee game again on the world’s largest gaming platform, and that Sony wouldn’t want to tell customers when a game that, despite the great controversy, has already sold more than 13 million copies being back at your store looks, frankly, strange. The development and launch of Cyberpunk, of course, was already an unpredictable journey, but the lack of detail in this chapter of this story is unusual, even among the rest. Whether it speaks of corporate caution, disputes between the two sides or other issues that have not been made public, it is impossible to guess.
That silence makes it difficult to predict where we will go from here – we can see the game go on sale tomorrow, or we can see that it takes another 100 days. There has simply never been a case like this in games before – I hope it has been a lesson enough to prevent it from happening again.
Joe Skrebels is the Executive News Editor at IGN. Follow him on Twitter. Do you have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Send an email to [email protected].