Elon Musk has just given a boost to the actions of the largest computer game maker in Poland, by being enthusiastic about the Cyberpunk game by CD Projekt SA on his Twitter account.
The company’s shares rose by 19%, the maximum since June 2015 and with turnover almost six times the three-month average, after the CEO of Tesla Inc. tweeted Thursday that “the aesthetic of Cyberpunk is incredible”. Hours earlier, the billionaire tweeted that it would be possible to play the complex and futuristic game in the new Model S Plaid.
CD Projekt’s shares rose this week along with some of Europe’s best-selling stocks in an echo of a similar recovery in the United States, where retail investors battled short sellers by accumulating names like GameStop Corp. The Polish game studio soared more than 40% in four days.
Problems with the company’s long-awaited Cyberpunk game, released in December, led to Sony Corp. to withdraw the title from its PlayStation store, in an unprecedented move for the industry. But the short interest on the shares started to fall from the record 10% level seen at the beginning of the month. Melvin Capital Management LP is among the funds with a short position in the shares of CD Projekt.
Reddit Crowd strikes Melvin Capital on industry alert
Musk showed interest for the first time in CD Projekt’s biggest production in 2019. Shortly after the game was revealed last month, he tweeted that he played briefly and that “looked very good”.
And the Polish game maker is not the only stock that has benefited from Musk’s tweets this week. On Tuesday, Etsy Inc.’s stock rose while Musk praised the company after buying a gift for his dog on the e-commerce platform.
CD Projekt’s shares, which plummeted after Cyberpunk’s troubled debut, ended the session 16% higher. The studio released a major patch over the weekend to fix bugs in the game, followed by a minor fix on Thursday.
(Updates shares, adds trading volume, reference to Melvin Capital in the 4th paragraph.)