In one of the probably many dissections of CD Projekt Red’s errors when making Cyberpunk 2077, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has just published an article investigating the game’s development. His report does not support rumors of the forum topic about Keanu Reeves, instead it is the most common issue with unrealistic development schedules and failure to take into account the console’s hardware limitations.
As the report explains, despite being announced in 2012, the company was still focused on The Witcher 3 and the “complete development” only started in 2016, when CD Projekt Red “hit the reset button”. The game’s impressive demonstration at E3 2018 is described as “almost totally false”. Despite promises from the leadership that crunch would not be necessary, developers still felt pressured to work for many hours, and when the spring 2020 release date was announced, they started betting on when it would be postponed.