Cyberpunk 2077 developer head CD Projekt Red has contested claims that an E3 demo of the game has been faked.
Adam Badowski posted an insight into the game’s creation via Twitter after a detailed report by Bloomberg which, among other things, stated that the E3 2018 demo was “almost entirely false” according to anonymous members of the development team.
The site’s sources stated that the underlying game systems had not been coded or even finalized by the time Cyberpunk 2077 was shown behind closed doors to the press and other industry professionals in June 2018, which is why it included features missing from the game. Final.
The developers said it was a “waste of months that should have been spent making the game.”
Badowski tweeted a statement addressing three claims in the article, beginning with the charge that the demos were false.
“It is difficult for a demonstration of a fair game not to be an eyesight test or a vertical slice two years before the launch of the game, but that does not mean it is false,” he said.
“The games are not made in a linear fashion and start to look like the final product just a few months before launch. If you look at the demo now, it is different, but that’s what the watermark ‘work is for in progress’. Our end game looks and works much better than that demo. “
He adds that the ‘missing’ features are “part of the creation process”, with some discarded based on the fact that they work well as part of the final product.
Badowski also contested that the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 was “disastrous”, as the article suggests, pointing to the critical acclaim it obtained on the PC.
“As for the consoles of the old generation, yes, that’s another case, but we assume that and we are working hard to eliminate bugs (on the PC too – we know it is not a perfect version either) and we are proud of Cyberpunk 2077 as a game and vision artistic. “
Bloomberg notes that CD Projekt Red declined to comment or participate in the appeal prior to publication.
Cyberpunk 2077 was actually released with critical acclaim, but soon faced an adverse reaction after reports emerged that the console versions were so affected by technical problems that it was said that they could not be played.
Complaints about the game prompted Sony to withdraw the game from the PlayStation Store and Microsoft to offer a full refund. The studio is also facing class action for misrepresenting the state of the game for investors.
CD Projekt Red has repeatedly said it is working on repairs, with two major patches scheduled for the coming months, and co-founder Marcin Iwiński last week issued another video apology.
In the video, Iwiński says the tests did not show the major problems during development. Bloomberg reports that the main bugs are still being discovered when Cyberpunk won gold in October.
Engineers also apparently alerted management that the game was too complex for the Xbox One and PS4, in part due to the visions of a bustling science fiction metropolis. But those warnings have been dismissed, with management pointing to what has been achieved with Witcher 3 on Microsoft and Sony devices.
The pandemic also played a role in the problems of editing the console; with the development team working remotely and testing the game on their home computers, they were unable to access the console’s development kits in the office and fully assess how it worked on the Xbox and PlayStation.
The Bloomberg article – built from interviews with more than 20 current employees and former employees of CD Projekt – states that there were many signs that the game would struggle to reach its 2020 release.
Sources said the development didn’t really start until the end of 2016 – despite the game’s announcement in 2012 – when CDP “basically hit the reset button” and started changing many key parts of the project.
When the company announced the April 16, 2020 release date during E3 2019, some team members believed that this was too ambitious, given the game’s progress at the time. 2022 was considered more likely.
However, in his statement, Badowski states that the feelings of more than 20 sources on this subject are not indicative of a complete team of more than 500 people.
There were also stories of language barriers, with CD Projekt demanding that all meetings be held in English after the Polish studio hired several expats from the United States and Western Europe.
Bloomberg says this has not been followed consistently, but Badowski again contests, adding that with 44 nationalities in the studio, there must be situations where people speak to each other in their native language when no one is around.
“Everyone here speaks English during meetings, all company-wide emails and announcements are in English – all of which are mandatory,” he wrote. “The rule is to switch to English when there is a person who is not speaking a certain language in casual conversation.”
The report’s author, Jason Schreier noted on twitter that Badowski does not directly address the claims of an unreal timeline or “brutal crisis” in his statement.
In the article, former audio programmer Adrian Jakubiak claimed to have crunched for up to 13 hours a day, five days a week.
There have been several reports of crunch at Cyberpunk 2077. Deputy CEO Adam Kiciński confirmed in January 2020 that team members had already been forced to work overtime “to a certain extent”.
Then, in September, it was reported that the studio was making overtime mandatory – despite previous claims of a “non-mandatory shredding policy” – to get the game ready for release in November. The game still dropped three weeks until December 10.
Cyberpunk 2077 was delayed three times last year, but Bloomberg sources say management said delays were not an option before 2020. While the timeline seems unreal, the studio was eager to launch before the Xbox Series was released. X and PlayStation 5 or even announced. he could “dive twice” with the next generation versions at a later date.
CD Projekt’s share price fell 30% over December, partly due to the reaction, but Bloomberg reports that they rose 6% after Iwiński’s apology.
Despite the controversy, Cyberpunk 2077 sold over 13 million copies worldwide in the first ten days