Cyberpunk 2077 Finally Has Some Good News
Cyberpunk 2077 finally has some good news around it. The much-plagued game is alive and well, starting to do real sale numbers.
This article is more than 2 years old
After a lackluster and borderline catastrophic launch, followed by a year’s period of numerous and seemingly never-ending bugs and glitches that have plagued the game, CD Projekt’s Cyberpunk 2077 finally has some good news – it’s working as intended. So what if it only took, what, a year? Regardless, CD Projekt has managed to fix the numerous issues initially plaguing the game, which is now one of the best-selling titles on Steam’s digital storefront.
According to Kotaku, Cyberpunk 2077 is currently hovering in the top half of Steam’s “Top 10 Sellers” list, getting new love due to its renewed state and its current half-price sale – sitting at approximately $30. That’s 50% off of the incredibly optimistic $60 price tag the developer and publisher CD Project RED has initially asked for the game, despite its well-documented issues. But now, after thousands of updates and patches that fixed countless bugs shipped with the game, and some other bugs caused by other patches, Cyberpunk 2077 is finally a functioning, enormous open-world RPG video game. And it only took nine years to develop and an additional year to fix.
Unfortunately, that only applies to PC versions of the game; console versions are still an entirely different playing field. In fact, when Cyberpunk 2077 initially launched, its numerous bugs and glitches reared their ugly heads precisely on console versions of the game before becoming apparent on the PC versions of the game. Following fandom’s dissatisfaction with the poorly optimized and seemingly unfinished game, CD Projekt apologized, allowing unsatisfied customers to opt for refunds, which, unfortunately for CD Projekt and Cyberpunk 2077‘s fans, didn’t go according to plan.
Numerous reports about players not getting said refund surfaced, and CD Projekt revealed that they didn’t have specific deals in place with either Microsoft or Sony to facilitate refunds. As such, those were dealt with according to standard refund policies. For example, in December 2020, Sony offered refunds to customers who purchased Cyberpunk 2077 through the PlayStation Store and consequentially removed the game from the store until June 2021, when they reinstated the game, warning customers that the title still suffers performance issues. A similar thing happened with Microsoft — the company offered refunds, but it hasn’t removed the title from its digital storefront.
Negative reviews aggregated, CD Projekt’s stocks fell, class-action lawsuits ensued, and the company decided to prioritize fixing the state of the game over further content development. And their efforts bore fruit, at least when it comes to the PC version of the game. The people at CD Project are overwhelmed by not-terrible reviews on Steam, which, boosted by the sale, now sit at “Very Positive.” Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of Cyberpunk 2077, which are sold through the respective storefronts and subscription services with a warning about the game’s poor performance. Someone should remind CD Projekt that they ought to fix those versions of the game before engaging in celebrations.
Unfortunately, CD Projekt’s example of how not to launch a gaming title was recently followed by Rockstar Games with their half-done GTA: The Trilogy remaster and EA Games/DICE with poorly optimized Battlefield 2042.
