After a week of refunds, excuses and patches, CD Projekt Red announced yesterday that its open-world sci-fi RPG Cyberpunk 2077 however, it has sold more than 13 million copies since its December 10 release. This despite the game’s blown performance on high-end consoles and some low-cost PCs, as well as the supposedly working conditions driven by overtime who went into doing it.
“[CDPR] announces that, based on reports obtained from digital distribution platforms and data collected from physical distributors, it estimates that by December 20, inclusive, players have purchased more than 13 million copies of Cyberpunk 2077 ”, wrote the company in a statement to investors. “This number represents the estimated volume of retail sales on all hardware platforms (taking into account the returns sent by retail customers both in physical stores and in digital stores), that is, the number of“ sales by distributors ”, minus all refund requests e- sent directly to the company until the date of publication of this report under the ‘Help Me Refund’ campaign. “
The closest readers will recognize some apparent caveats in this ad, the largest of which the 13 million figure appears to be an estimate, rather than being based strictly on existing actual sales data. The statement also says that it represents total sales minus all refunds requested, but it is not clear whether this reflects most of all refunds or simply those that retailers have had time to report so far. CDPR did not immediately respond to a request for comment to clarify its observations.
CDPR first apologized for the state of the game on December 14, suggesting to anyone who was disappointed with the way Cyberpunk 2077 played can get a refund. This proved to be difficulthowever, since Sony and Microsoft’s digital storefronts do not necessarily allow refunds for games that have already been played. On December 17th, Sony removed the game from its PlayStation Store completely, guaranteeing refunds in all areas. This no questions asked refund option quickly expanded for the Microsoft platform too, followed by CDPR itself and even retailers like Best Buy. Earlier this week, Kotaku reported that even GameStop stores were being told to reimburse Cyberpunk 2077 customers, even if they’ve already opened and played the game.
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In this context, 13 million does not sound bad for a game whose release The New York Times recently called “One of the most visible disasters in the history of video games.” Just before the game’s release, CDPR announced that it had been pre-ordered 8 million times, and on December 11 reported that only pre-orders had already allowed the balance in the development and marketing costs of the game. Five million more in sales since the launch of a game whose litany of flaws went viral and whose console version currently has below 60 on Metacritic it is more than most games will ever sell. In comparison, it took Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order several months to reach 10 million copies sold.
Still, apparently, it’s not as much sales as shareholders expected. Bloomberg reports that CDPR shares fell 3.7% after the news, a total drop of 42% from the peak at the beginning of the month.