Current Events > The CDPR staff are PISSED after failed Cyberpunk launch

(+) Yeah! (+)

Rebellion is in the air at Polish video game publisher CD Projekt SA after the companys highly anticipated, and thrice-delayed, latest title was released to scathing reviews about glitches.

Frustrated and angry staff fired questions at the board during an internal video meeting Thursday that opened with management apologizing for Cyberpunk 2077s disastrous launch, according to two people who were present. It was a fitting atmosphere for a company whose slogan, plastered on posters all around its Warsaw office, is We are rebels.

Developers asked blunt questions about the companys reputation, the games unrealistic deadlines and the relentless overtime in the months and years leading up to the games Dec. 10 release.

The meeting took place before Sony Corp.s shocking announcement that it was pulling Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store and will offer full refunds to any customer who requests one. During the staff meeting, CD Projekts directors said they had come to an arrangement with Sony but didnt offer specifics. In a Twitter post on Friday, the company said that following our discussion with PlayStation, a decision was made to temporarily suspend digital distribution of the game.

A CD Projekt spokeswoman said the company wouldnt comment on internal meeting discussions.

Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the biggest games of the year and has been a financial success, selling more than 8 million pre-orders and notching sales records for PC games. But players have found the game full of bugs, particularly on the last-generation PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles, sending CD Projekt shares plummeting and leading fans and critics to describe Cyberpunk 2077 as unfinished. CD Projekts stock fell 12% in Warsaw Friday, punctuating a steady decline this month that has wiped out gains for the year.

During Cyberpunk 2077s development, staff endured multiple periods of extensive overtime including mandatory six-day weeks to finish the game, Bloomberg has reported. When asked about this crunch time in the Q&A, the directors said they had plans to improve production practices in the future but didnt elaborate, according to one person who was there.

One employee asked the board why it had said in January that the game was complete and playable when that wasnt true, to which the board answered that it would take responsibility. Another developer asked whether CD Projekts directors felt it was hypocritical to make a game about corporate exploitation while expecting that their employees work overtime. The response was vague and noncommital.

Many industry observers have wondered why Cyberpunk 2077, which was first announced in 2012 and was delayed three times in 2020, still appears to be unfinished. Several current and former staff who worked on Cyberpunk 2077 have all said the same thing: The games deadlines, set by the board of directors, were always unrealistic. It was clear to many of the developers that they needed more time.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-18/cyberpunk-game-maker-faces-hostile-staff-after-failed-launch

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Understandable.

I hope a class action lawsuit from consumers is next!

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Corpos gonna corpo.

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Isn't it their fault for creating an unfinished game?
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lilORANG posted...

Isn't it their fault for creating an unfinished game?

No lol

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lilORANG posted...

Isn't it their fault for creating an unfinished game?

You think the programmers and content designers set the deadlines and the release date?

7 years seems like plenty of time to me, too. Im sure if I were an investor, I'd be really skeptical that pushing back to next holiday would make any financial sense at all - I would naturally assume the devs would want to push it back again, since what's the difference between 7 and 8 and 9 years at this point.

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Balrog0 posted...

7 years seems like plenty of time to me, too. Im sure if I were an investor, I'd be really skeptical that pushing back to next holiday would make any financial sense at all - I would naturally assume the devs would want to push it back again, since what's the difference between 7 and 8 and 9 years at this point.

Rumor has it they didn't actually start proper development on it until 2016, and didn't start console versions until 2018.

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I feel bad for the people who made the game. You know they went into this project thinking "We're going to make the best cyberpunk-themed game ever made" not "We're going to make Goat Simulator with dubstep".

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pres_madagascar posted...

Rumor has it they didn't actually start proper development on it until 2016, and didn't start console versions until 2018.

Well The Witcher 3 came out in 2015 and they made DLC for that game for another year after that. Assuming Cyberpunk 2077 had four years of full development is pretty reasonable.

I havent played the game yet but it seems like most of the complaints are about PS4 and Xbone limitations. They wouldve done better to scrap those versions and focus purely on the next-gen experience and let the game be a system seller (not that there are any systems to move right now)

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pres_madagascar posted...

Rumor has it they didn't actually start proper development on it until 2016, and didn't start console versions until 2018.

Haha, well, that's pretty bad. I wonder how you verify that kind of thing.

Pitlord_Special posted...

Well The Witcher 3 came out in 2015 and they made DLC for that game for another year after that. Assuming Cyberpunk 2077 had four years of full development is pretty reasonable.

At what point did they scale up to having 500-600 employees?

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Balrog0 posted...

7 years seems like plenty of time to me, too. Im sure if I were an investor, I'd be really skeptical that pushing back to next holiday would make any financial sense at all - I would naturally assume the devs would want to push it back again, since what's the difference between 7 and 8 and 9 years at this point.

It wasn't really in development for that amount of time. Realistically most of the work was done post Witcher 3's Blood and Wine Expansion. At the time they just weren't a large enough developer to be working on two projects of that size. Everything prior to that point was conceptual work. Which of course doesn't excuse the state of current gen console release, but the whole "they worked on it for 8 years" narrative isn't entirely factual or honest.

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Pitlord_Special posted...

Well The Witcher 3 came out in 2015 and they made DLC for that game for another year after that. Assuming Cyberpunk 2077 had four years of full development is pretty reasonable.

I havent played the game yet but it seems like most of the complaints are about PS4 and Xbone limitations. They wouldve done better to scrap those versions and focus purely on the next-gen experience and let the game be a system seller (not that there are any systems to move right now)

It's not limitations. People expected the graphics to not be great. It's all the other crazy amounts of technical issues.

Also, they could not scrap last gen versions, under any circumstance. That's where all the money was going to be made, and they knew thst.

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They should unionize

The PC version seems like a finished product, honestly. The "failed launch" is really much more related to
PS4/Xbox One, and to a lesser extent the lack of dedicated PS5/XSX versions.

That said, I'm more than 30 hours in and it's just not a great game. It doesn't seem unfinished per se, but more like a game that tries to do too many things but does all of them half-assed.


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ElatedVenusaur posted...

You think the programmers and content designers set the deadlines and the release date?

I think they build the game...
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lilORANG posted...

I think they build the game...

So why do you think it being released before they're done doing that is their fault?

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powerman1426 posted...

So why do you think it being released before they're done doing that is their fault?

I mean at some point 3 delays indicates the team isn't doing what it's supposed to.
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powerman1426 posted...

So why do you think it being released before they're done doing that is their fault?

Incompetent management who are Bean Counters make stupid decisions that affect all the developers who are lower on the totem pole.

The Dev's aren't stupid enough to release a game in a buggy state by choice, it's almost always upper management who sees $$$ and gets greedy and wants to cash out.

They don't want to pull a Nintendo and release when they feel like it.

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Tragic.

Alexa, play Wolves by Kanye West

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I understand why management and investors and the people up top pushed for what they did, but the blame lies with them for the product. The workers were doing insane crunch and trying to get it out the door. The ultimate decision to launch lies with the people up top and they will try to push the blame onto the guys who did the actual work rather than take responsibility for their poor decision to launch an unfinished product.

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Is this the most overhyped game of this generation

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If your game isn't ready before release it means either

A) Your timeline was too aggressive given the scope of the game and the number of available developers you have available
B) Your developers are lazy and half-assed everything

Given all the heat CDPR has gotten for crunching their staff, I'm guessing it is not option B. Which means that they either needed a more reasonable timeliness or they needed to hire more people.

Very rarely is a rushed product or bad quality the fault of the people working 60+ hour weeks. It's the fault of the people forcing that to be necessary.

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Compsognathus posted...

If your game isn't ready before release it means either

A) Your timeline was too aggressive given the scope of the game and the number of available developers you have available
B) Your developers are lazy and half-assed everything

Given all the heat CDPR has gotten for crunching their staff, I'm guessing it is not option B. Which means that they either needed a more reasonable timeliness or they needed to hire more people.

Very rarely is a rushed product or bad quality the fault of the people working 60+ hour weeks. It's the fault of the people forcing that to be necessary.

Its come out in quite a few ways that it was the board that was pushing the release dates. Internally things were bad and they gave the devs a pittance of extra time to try to get something workable.

They needed another year. It was just too ambitious.

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ToadallyAwesome posted...

Its come out in quite a few ways that it was the board that was pushing the release dates. Internally things were bad and they gave the devs a pittance of extra time to try to get something workable.

They needed another year. It was just too ambitious.

They should've only released the PS5/XSX|S/PC versions and delayed the PS4/XB1X versions until next year.

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KamenRiderBlade posted...

They should've only released the PS5/XSX|S/PC versions and delayed the PS4/XB1X versions until next year.

Couldnt do that. It would have been an even worse release than what we had cause there would have been good reviews with a better version. Not to mention by next Christmas the new systems will be in full force. Just bad luck that we are in a generation change.

They fucked up with the PS4/XB1 versions. Its obvious they built the game for PC (high end ones at that) and tried to down scale it on dated hardware. Which is most likely what the delays this year were about.

My theory is that the PS4/XB1 versions were in contracts they signed long before it was an issue. Time marched on to the point it was a problem. So CDPR were put in a situation of their own making.

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mismanagement is plastered all over this game.


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pres_madagascar posted...

No lol

Uh...yes, lol. Creating, absolutely...but releasing it? Big nope.

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ssjevot posted...

I understand why management and investors and the people up top pushed for what they did, but the blame lies with them for the product. The workers were doing insane crunch and trying to get it out the door. The ultimate decision to launch lies with the people up top and they will try to push the blame onto the guys who did the actual work rather than take responsibility for their poor decision to launch an unfinished product.

It sounds like someone lied to investors, too. Wonder who exactly thought they'd benefit from all this

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How do you fuck up a launch so badly?

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Studio heads on behalf of Investors: "release the game now!"
Devs: "but it's not ready"
Heads: "do it anyway"
*game comes out a hot mess*
Investors: "we're suing you now over the shape its in".

Fucking christ.

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Mr_Karate_II posted...

How do you fuck up a launch so badly?

The devs didn't, the studio owner guys who are billionaires, and the investors did. The devs apparently tried to tell them it needed another 3-6 months in the over at least, but the investors were pressuring to get it released before Christmas.

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Who's idea was it to hide how bad last gen looked?

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fuck up one game and there goes your studio

Balrog0 posted...

It sounds like someone lied to investors, too. Wonder who exactly thought they'd benefit from all this

Or the investors didnt care that it wasnt finished and wanted the holiday sales.

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biggest screw up i seen in the gaming world since No Mans Sky.

but hey, they can always redeem themselves like Hello Games did...