A box with the Sony PlayStation 4 Cyberpunk 2077 Collector’s Edition on the counter.
Alexander Sayganov | SOPA images | LightRocket via Getty Images
LONDON – Cyberpunk 2077 developers are postponing the release of new content for the game to focus on fixing bugs and crashes.
Polish game developer and publisher CD Projekt released the highly anticipated sci-fi epic last month. It has been the target of fierce criticism for launching what many fans and critics saw as an unfinished game.
Cyberpunk was one of the hottest big-budget video games of 2020. But it was affected by a plethora of bugs and declines in the performance of older consoles, like Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One.
CD Projekt sought to appease fans with the promise of a refund and improvements to the game. But that didn’t stop Sony from removing Cyberpunk from its digital PlayStation Store, a move that many industry analysts said was unprecedented for an AAA title.
Marcin Iwiński, co-founder of CD Projekt, apologized in a video posted on the game’s YouTube channel on Wednesday.
“Despite the good reviews on the PC, the console version of Cyberpunk 2077 did not meet the quality standard we wanted,” said Iwiński. “I and the entire leadership team deeply regret this and this video is me publicly assuming it.”
“Please don’t blame any of our teams for what happened,” he added. “They are all incredibly talented and work hard.
“The board and I are the final decision makers, and it was our call to launch the game. Although, believe me, we never intended for something like this to happen.”
Iwiński explained that many of the game’s problems on older hardware stemmed from his great ambitions on the PC. Cyberpunk is “huge in scope,” he said, bringing together “an infinity of custom objects, systems and interactive mechanics” in “a large city and in a relatively load-free environment”.
“We made it even more difficult for ourselves, wanting to make the game look epic on PCs and then adjusting it to consoles, especially the older generation” like the PS4 and Xbox One, he added.
Iwiński said the planned release of the free downloadable content CD Projekt, or DLC, to accompany the main game, would be postponed because developers rushed to fix the many problems and flaws that players experienced.
“We decided to focus on the most important fixes and updates first and will launch the DLCs later,” said CD Projekt co-founder.
He added that versions of the game for next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft will be released in the second half of the year. Players currently can only play the PS4 and Xbox One versions of Cyberpunk on the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X systems.
CD Projekt’s shares were up 2% on Thursday morning. The game maker’s stock price has dropped about 38% since Cyberpunk was released on December 10.
“We take this whole situation very seriously and are working hard to correct it,” said Iwiński on Wednesday. “The guiding principles of our company are still fundamental to what we do, we still want to make incredible games and have open communication with you, our players.”
In addition to the controversy over the unsuccessful launch of Cyberpunk, CD Projekt also faced accusations of “crunch culture”, a common problem in the game industry that sees developers working long hours to finish a game in time. Cyberpunk was delayed three times before its release.
“The team is working to bring relevant fixes to the game without any mandatory extension”, CD Projekt Red did you add Red here? said in a news update Wednesday. “Avoiding problems in all of our future projects is one of our top priorities.”