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Cyberpunked
How does a game publisher lose over a billion dollars of value in a week? How does one of the industry’s most popular companies become its whipping boy overnight? Why might a product receive rave reviews at launch and disastrously critical reviews only a few days later? And what does it suggest about the industry at large?
Even to someone very familiar with the video games industry, the past week has been surprising and mystifying, but let me try to untangle the mystery based on public knowledge so far.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a multi-platform big-budget video game based on a pen-and-paper game (ala Dungeons and Dragons) by Mike Pondsmith. The game is published by CD Projekt, a Polish company that garnered tremendous respect with The Witcher series; in particular, The Witcher 3, which has sold around 30 million copies so far. That’s at $60 each before discounts. CD Projekt Red (CDPR) is the publisher’s game development arm.
A quick note: For a movie, a consumer generally pays between $5 and $25 dollars for 2-to-4 hours of entertainment. A modern “open world” game can offer dozens or even hundreds of hours of entertainment for $30 to $60. Unlike a film, many games can be enjoyable without needing to see them through to the end. It’s a world to explore a bit at a time, rather than a strictly linear experience. Thus, a game with “hundreds of hours” of content might actually be something you enjoy only a few hours each month but for years.
The Witcher 3 stands tall among open world games on account of its deeply thoughtful and extensive storytelling. There are countless stories to discover. One of the most popular narratives involves a wealthy baron whose life becomes a misery after he fails to bury his child born in miscarriage. As usual, the player has choices in how the story unfolds.
CD Projekt Red won fans not just with an exceptional playground of overlapping narratives, but also with improvements and bits of content added free for players who already bought the game. The Witcher 3 seemed like a better bargain all the time.
Additionally, CD Projekt operates one of the most successful alternatives to the Steam marketplace for PC (personal computer) games. Non-gamers can think of it as an Amazon or iTunes store for video games. What sets CD Projekt’s service apart is its commitment to avoid DRM (digital rights management) software, implemented to ensure legal ownership of games but at costs to accessibility and performance. For example, DRM might require online verification of a single-player offline game, thereby making the game inaccessible whenever one’s Internet connection fails.
In short, many gamers perceived CD Projekt as champions for the little guy while bigger publishers try to squeeze their customers for every last cent. Well deserved or not, CDP/CDPR enjoyed a favorable reputation.
Then this happened.
Cyberpunk 2077 is the next big game from CD Projekt Red. Having been in active development for more than 6 years, the game was expected to rival the company’s previous masterpiece. Fans didn’t rely only on blind hope. The first trailer revealed an edgy, wonderfully realized sci-fi world that promised to combine gunplay and cinematic action with thoughtful storytelling and rewarding player choices.
On high-end PCs, the game really does look that good. The art design and realization is extremely impressive. Cyberpunk 2077 utilizes a cutting-edge animation system that synchronizes dialogue in many languages for localization.
But Cyberpunk 2077 was not marketed only for expensive PCs and next-generation gaming consoles like the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X. It was promoted for basic Xbox One and Playstation 4 consoles, originally and right up to the game’s publication. The game doesn’t look or perform well at all on those older consoles.
CDPR failed to mention that while accepting preorders.
Eight million copies of Cyberpunk 2077 were preordered or purchased within the first day of the game’s launch and roughly 40% of those sales were on Xbox and Playstation.
Since the new Series X/S and PS5 consoles have been in limited supply, I’d guess that 35% of those sales were on older consoles. Many were to owners of mid-generation upgrade consoles, like the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. But then there are budget PC users. And advanced consoles do not yet have bespoke versions of the game. They run the game in backward compatibility mode.
Overall, maybe half of Cyberpunk 2077 owners are enjoying a relatively stable, pretty, and smooth-performing experience.
A few days before the game’s publication, CDPR customers who follow daily gaming news had reason to be suspicious. Game reviewers are normally afforded review copies on all platforms several days before launch. Strangely, CDPR provided review copies of the PC version 3 days before launch but provided none for the console versions. The company claimed that a last-minute patch was to blame.
All versions would receive a Day One patch, as has become customary for video games (for good reason). But the patch could not salvage the awful mess that showed on 7-year-old base consoles. Nor did it address the broken AI and physics systems that continue to plague Cyberpunk 2077 even on the most powerful 2020 hardware.
CDPR did show the game running on the most powerful mid-gen upgrade console, the Xbox One X. However, as I noted at the time, that video seemed to carefully avoid fast-moving vehicle scenes, large gun fights, and large open environments with many characters on screen — the most difficult scenarios for hardware to process in real time. Performance during real gameplay was not evident, for certain.
More telling was the NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) that CDPR required of game reviewers. An NDA is normal in the process. It usually sets the day (before the game’s release) that game reviews may be published. A review NDA also sets limits on what gameplay footage may be shared before release, primarily to avoid spoilers of key plot twists and characters.
The Cyberpunk 2077 reviewer NDA was different. It limited reviews to use of the gameplay footage provided by CD Projekt Red in trailers; the reviewers’ own gameplay could not be shown.
Professional game reviewers publicly expressed concerns over these strange conditions: the NDA and the absence of review copies on consoles. Nevertheless, many were very impressed by Cyberpunk 2077 on high-end gaming PCs and gave the game high marks in their reviews. It’s worth noting that most professional reviewers are constantly pressed for time and trained as writers, so they tend to applaud film-like experiences with linear narratives of modest duration. In any case, most reviewers recommended Cyberpunk 2077.
Then the game launched. And the cyberware hit the fan.
In many ways, Cyberpunk 2077 excels and lives up to the extraordinary anticipation. The central narrative is thrilling by all accounts and does indeed offer opportunities for significant player choices in that progression. The metropolis is brilliantly realized with jaw-dropping visuals, dense crowds, cool cars, crazy cybernetics, and an over-arching theme that even in a broken, decadent hellhole like Night City good people can be found. But…
There is no excuse for this:
It was the best of games. It was the worst of games. IGN scored the PC version 9/10 but the Xbox One-PS4 version 4/10. The PC review score seems overly generous for reasons I will explain.
Metacritic, a site that gathers and averages review scores, shows lower overall scores among users than among professional reviews. In a recent podcast, one professional critic at Rock Paper Shotgun described the game as excellent until you slow down to take a hard look at any particular gameplay system.
One must distinguish between problems particular to one platform and problems common to all versions.
The base platforms suffer from poor resolutions, making the game look a decade or even two decades old at times. Framerates are unsteady, slow, jittery, and at times even sickening. I will skip over various other issues with industry-specific terms, like model and texture pop-in. The game often freezes or crashes, forcing the player to reboot the game or even reboot one’s hardware. The number of NPCs (non-player characters) on screen is paltry and not immersive on base consoles.
On even the best platforms, many AI systems are either broken or horribly underdeveloped. The result is character and vehicle behaviors that have not been common among big-budget games in decades. Pedestrians walk into each other. Drivers cannot drive around obstacles in their strictly scripted paths. Unseen, unheard crimes in empty rooms are magically reported. But not theft. You can take anything from anyone, even vendors, and nobody will even notice.
In modern video games, characters typically “spawn” (appear) off-screen, so not to spoil the illusion of an immersive world. In Cyberpunk 2077, police can spawn behind you in a moving elevator. They can spawn inside of walls. They can “clip” through vehicles and other objects, meaning they walk through like ghosts… before getting stuck when collision detection finally kicks in.
Heavy traffic? Just turn around and vehicles will “despawn” (disappear) behind you. But watch out for that car tumbling through the air because some hiccup of poor physics simulation threw it your way. YouTuber Angry Joe has shared some absurd and hilarious examples, if you don’t mind the critic’s constant stream of obscenities.
Or perhaps your character is killed by a bullet hovering in air as you cross the street. Or maybe you have to retry a mission (narrative episode) — again — because the game froze, or a character got caught in an animation loop, or another car came hurtling in. Or maybe you just tire of NPCs who act like so much window dressing, having no routines or interests and being unable to offer even one line of dialogue beyond the same curt dismissal.
There is also the problem of insignificant life paths. In my own experience with the early hours of Cyberpunk 2077, I can recall an instance in which my choice of character origin — Nomad, Corpo, or Street Kid — influenced an interaction beyond the game’s initial mission. But many players have complained that this much-advertised choice is not half so critical to gameplay as developers claimed. The wealth of player freedom involved in exploration and combat decisions does not seem present in narrative experiences.
A side note: though the new Xbox Series X/S consoles and the new PS5 consoles have power surpassing most consumer PCs and can show Cyberpunk 2077 well, those consoles are at present only running versions of the game designed for previous-generation consoles. The game has yet to be optimized for new consoles. Therefore, those consoles arguably endure bugs and shortcomings that might otherwise be avoided.
Cyberpunk 2077, put simply, is unpolished and unfinished.
That much is a familiar experience to gamers in this era of the Internet. Game publishers too often release incomplete products because content and optimizations can be patched in later with weekly or monthly updates.
I mentioned earlier that Day One patches are acceptable. That’s because developers can bring a game to a solid state for release and yet continue working in the month or so while that completed code is prepared on discs with packaging for mass distribution.
Many gamers enjoy ongoing content additions, which publishers appreciate for ongoing revenue opportunities — DLC (downloadable content) and MTs (microtransactions). Some miss the days when games were sold as definite products rather than licensed services. But there are certainly upsides to games-as-service. The chief downside is that publishers are tempted to cut themselves too much slack.
Cyberpunk 2077 is far from alone in launching before it is ready. Fallout 76, Anthem, No Man’s Sky, Battlefield V, and even Skyrim had terrible launches. A few of those recovered to become popular, financially successful, critically adored games. Cyberpunk 2077 could recover as well… if CD Projekt Red stops digging the hole deeper.
But first, why was Cyberpunk 2077 released in such a broken state?
There are several possibilities. One involves pressure over prolonged “crunch time” — an industry bugaboo for which CDPR in particular has faced criticism from journalists. Jason Schreier (formerly of Kotaku, now with Bloomberg) again has the inside scoop on disgruntled employees suffering under seemingly feckless management. For brevity’s sake (“Too late!”), I will skip the debate over the inevitability of month-after-month crunch time during projects spanning half-a-decade.
Other likely factors are investor pressure and marketing, distribution contracts.
CD Projekt is a publicly traded company. Though The Witcher 3 has been immensely successful and GOG (the competitor to Steam’s PC gaming marketplace) is profitable, investors were probably anxious to see another major game published soon. The first teaser trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 was released in 2013. The game might have been only in the concept phase then. But investors have been licking their lips ever since.
CD Projekt Red already pushed back publicized Cyberpunk 2077 release dates 3 times. By this point, their contracts for worldwide advertising had probably been put into motion… and red ink. Marketing firms were paid. TV spots were purchased. Billboards, posters, T-shirts, figurines, and countless other materials were manufactured. The kraken was set to be unleashed.
Another possible setback was late-breaking bugs in the software.
A blockbuster video game — the sort of project that employs hundreds of developers over a course of years — is a giant and intricate design with many moving parts. Such world simulations are designed to be dynamic and continually surprising. The trouble is that complex overlapping systems with so many variables also surprise developers; often not in a good way.
The larger and more complex a game becomes, the more likely that something will cause complications with something else. Even with foresight and good management, problems can arise and whole systems can stop working properly late in development. Perhaps CDPR ran into troubles of this sort, though Cyberpunk 2077 is substandard in so many ways currently that I can’t believe that’s the whole story.
Expectations were high. The pressure to reveal a completed masterpiece mounted. And now?
Now, a mere week after the game’s release, demand for refunds is so great that CD Projekt Red has been moved to assist in pursuit of them. Sony has gone so far as to remove Cyberpunk 2077 from sale at the Playstation store “until further notice.” Both Sony and Microsoft, after communication with CDPR, have agreed to issue refunds to any console players who request them.
Investors read the writing on the wall when CDPR withheld console review copies before launch. The company’s value decreased by more than 20% in the past week, starting before Cyberpunk 2077‘s release. Its founders lost more than a billion dollars of invested wealth.
Here’s the kicker: they did it to themselves.
In a company of hundreds, most developers at CD Projekt Red have no control over the release date or overall quality issues; nor do they govern marketing. But management? The executives have lied again and again — to investors, to reviewers, to customers, even to their own employees.
They are still lying.
In a public statement, executives said they should have “paid more attention” to last-generation consoles. Can you imagine any scenario in which management neither saw all products set to launch for themselves nor heard warnings from team leaders and employees who did see those unready products? Of course they knew console versions especially were not ready for release. That’s why those versions were procedurally and continuously hidden from reviewers in the days before launch, while customer preorders for console versions were maintained.
As noted by the exceptionally deliberate Richard Leadbetter at Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry (generally regarded as game journalism’s best analysts of technical performance), CD Projekt Red called into question the product certification processes of Microsoft and Sony. It’s difficult to imagine base console versions being salvaged. Leadbetter cites another statement by CDPR execs:
“After three delays, we as the management board were too focused on releasing the game,” said CDPR joint-CEO Adam Kiciński. “We underestimated the scale and complexity of the issues, we ignored the signals about the need for additional time to refine the game on the base last-gen consoles. It was the wrong approach and against our business philosophy. On top of that, during the campaign, we showed the game mostly on PCs.”
Again, executives needed only see the game played for 10 minutes on base consoles to understand “the scale and complexity of the issues” making release intolerable for many gamers. “We ignored the signals” seems a weasel-worded way of saying they overruled the objections of employees insisting that the game was not ready for launch.
There is a way forward. The game is fundamentally impressive. Millions of players have decided to keep playing Cyberpunk 2077 despite its launch problems. Millions more, including myself, look forward to buying it again (after refunds) when the game is truly completed, polished, and optimized for targeted hardware platforms. Skyrim recovered from a terrible launch to become one of the most popular video games in history. It can be done.
But for Cyberpunk 2077 fans to regain faith in CD Projekt Red and agree to pay the original price after such disrespect, CDPR executives must stop lying. The way forward begins with honesty. Like the creators of No Man’s Sky, CDPR can go silent while they work to rectify design problems and add content. But before the silence must come a genuine apology and an accounting of concerns. Given that respect, gamers will forgive and move on as they have before.
The game industry at large has developed a bad habit of selling games before they are ready. Such offenses are not typically so severe. Preview programs can be beneficial to all in select cases. But gamers are slowly learning that preorders are a fool’s gamble. Even smaller publishers like CD Projekt are not beyond temptation to abuse that trust.
There is hope for Cyberpunk 2077. A film is forever. But, in the era of the Internet, a game is never done.
Oh, I almost forgot! Amid this Cyberpunk 2077 release drama, CD Projekt’s GOG worldwide marketplace hosted a PC game from Taiwan that had been banned in China for poking fun at Dear Leader via his verboten appreciation of Winnie the Pooh. GOG hosted the game just long enough for gamers to notice that the game was then removed from the store, following complaints from Chinese “gamers” who of course spoke only for themselves.
“Stop hitting yourself!” CD Projekt fans explained.
Published in Entertainment
They are having a bad week. Not as bad as SolarWinds, though.
As a TV guy, I have no sympathy. Getting the consumer to change hardware is arduous. I cannot imagine what it’s like to then have competing standards in the market. (Yes, we had the VHS/Betamax dual but the input and output was exactly the same.)
There is nothing in your tale of woe that could not have been cured with a little honesty. “For optimal enjoyment this game should be played on the following systems: …” My days of game buying were for PCs. You always read the system requirements.
Honestly, not being a programmer, I don’t understand how developing a game for multiple consoles is harder than developing games for multiple PC configurations. It should be easier because the specifications are more defined. Developing for PCs seems like a nightmare.
APIs might be to blame.
Here is a glimpse of Cyberpunk 2077 at its visual best, as presented by Digital Foundry in discussion of light simulation techniques. Best viewed on a 4K TV with HDR.
Great post! I’m in the same boat. I’ll say there are a lot of things I don’t understand. First off: money. They wanted it so they put it on all the consoles and they needed to get this thing out the door before people lost interest, it ran into fierce competition, or it just plain became a drag on the entire company.
I guess I’m in the fortunate bunch where the game works for me (I’m on PC). But the developers have to deliver a good experience to everyone and I can understand people who see what CDPR did as a slap in the face, since you get the feeling they sorta knew it was gonna be a… “mess”… on current gen.
At the same time, I am a little weirded out. Aside from Last of Us 2 dunking, I haven’t seen a game people have wanted to fail for so long so I feel like there won’t be a proper accounting of Cyberpunk for a while. It’s a great game so far. It isn’t a “killer” (back when we talked about a “skyrim killer” or a “halo killer”) but it’s a great game. I’m just surprised at how many people got a heavy emotional investment in seeing it fail.
Interesting piece, Aaron. While I’ve been programming computers for decades, I’ve never been into computer gaming: I think the first and last computer game I bought for myself was Tetris, circa 1986. But I try to keep up on the technology just a little, and I’m aware of the power of game platforms and have some sense of the sophistication of modern games. Even so, the videos you linked surprise me with their richness and complexity.
Andrew Klavan has often commented that the locus of artistic creativity and storytelling has shifted, in his opinion, from literature, through movies, and is now in the video game world. I think Andrew is wise about a lot of things, and I’m willing to acknowledge that he might be right about this as well. If so, it may finally have left me completely behind, as I just can’t imagine myself getting into it.
On the other hand, my youngest son (23) has just built for himself one of these absurdly optimized gaming PC systems with the liquid-cooled CPU and the fancy graphics cards. Maybe I’ll buy his older computer from him and dip my toes in the video game world. Is Railroad Tycoon still a thing? That always looked like fun….
Thanks for a detailed and educational post.
That’s an interesting consideration. I expect Bethesda’s Starfield will be shown and perhaps even released before the end of next year. Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla is a different sort of open world game. First person open world RPGs are exceedingly rare. CD Projekt might not want to lose the spotlight to Starfield.
Or they might have realized they announced the game too soon and feared a Star Citizen situation in which mamy people lose confidence in it ever being completed. Everyone hates vaporware.
If the PC can handle it, Planet Coaster is an excellent theme park and roller coaster design sim of that general variety. There are other many games in the simulator genre. You could do worse than Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, which is available on PC will soon be available on Xbox Series X.
If you’re a hunter or outdoorsman, you should also check out The Hunter: Call of the Wild. I bought a copy for an old hunter this Christmas since he can’t hunt as often as he used to. A video game isn’t the same; but it sidesteps hunting seasons, regulations, and expenses.
If anyone here in another project-oriented industry would care to comment on crunch time for months on end, I would be interested to what extent you believe it can be avoided or moderated.
Game design is a passion industry. It’s easy to attract young idealists who will devote every waking hour to that passion. But eventually idealists grow up and start families.
Of course, not every game developer is an artist. Programmers are the work horses of game design.
A good reputation is only one screwup from escaping, and once it is in the wind, it is hell getting it back. Pre-sales may be depressed the next time out.
Are they though? The Last of Us 2‘s developer Naughty Dog suffered a leak of their content before release, which I’m sure was frustrating, but their tactics – including launching copyright strikes against Youtube channels for merely discussing story details – struck a lot of people as being over the top. Since one of those details was the early death of a beloved character from the first game, Naughty Dog turned winning friends and influencing people into making enemies and cheesing people off.
CD Projekt didn’t cover themselves in glory here, but Naughty Dog went full Snidely Whiplash. You never go full Snidely Whiplash.
Railroad Tycoon 2, 3, and Sid Meier’s Railroads! are available on Steam for decent prices, although I think 3 had some problems loading.
I’ve been tempted to pick up Cyberpunk 2077 to see if it would necessitate me upgrading my PC. Currently, it’s just me looking at the new hardware going “oh, Shiny!” Also, from the hype, it did look like a decent game.
I had never heard about it (surprise) until Aaron’s post, but the trailers and the review of the ray tracing just blow me away. I talked to son #5 about it a few minutes ago, and he tells me he’s waiting for it to stabilize before he buys it — but he does intend to pick it up.
It’s funny. I enjoy science fiction in large part because of the ideas and the effects. Even mediocre science fiction movies, if they’re sufficiently big budget on the effects, usually hold my interest. (An exception is the Star Wars and Star Trek franchise stuff, at least after the first couple of movies made in each. I just can’t stomach the degree to which they take themselves seriously.) But I’ve never thought of video games as science fiction, complete with interesting concepts and competent effects. Looking at these little videos, it’s obvious that that’s what they’ve become.
Though some have knocked his voice-acting as a little flat, Keanu Reeves plays a major role in the narrative of Cyberpunk 2077. These are massive budgets now with links to Hollywood.
I wasn’t as hyped as journalists about Reeves starring in the game. But it is interesting because of his involvement in so many sci-fi movies.
I admit, I have been tempted to buy the game back now that I have a Series X console. But it will be several months before that version looks as good as the PC version. The Xbox version doesn’t yet include ray-tracing.
What, Oregon Trail not good enough for you any more? :-)
Did you ever play Infocom’s “Starcross?” I enjoyed that back in the 80s, played on a Compaq Portable borrowed from work, along with a printer to keep a “log.”
Interesting thought. I wonder what the computer game answer to Crime and Punishment would be like. Or Oedipus Rex.
I can’t figure why people with older game consoles would believe – even if told by the company – that some brand new game would work/be playable on their older systems.
I think great literature might fall into a more narrow category than “artistic creativity and storytelling.” Instead of Crime and Punishment or Les Misérables, think of stuff by Ian Fleming, or Larry McMurtry, or John D. MacDonald, and television and popular movies of the past few decades.
Video games don’t resonate with me. They combine themes and presentation I might enjoy with a level of effort I don’t associate with entertainment. They just seem like a lot of work for a payoff I don’t think I crave.
But then, I’m not into puzzles, nor do I program recreationally. Maybe I just like lazy entertainment.
Because developers get better and better at utilizing a console’s power as they gain experience with it. Data compression techniques improve. And game design is fundamentally a magic trick — directing focus and creating illusions — so there are ways to fake power.
The last couple years of a console’s life cycle always include games few would have believed possible on that hardware years before. Kameo‘s many characters on screen was impressive when the Xbox 360 launched. That console ended with Arkham City and Skyrim.
Yes, but Xbox 360 first came out FIFTEEN YEARS AGO.
Which is why we got the Xbox One 7 years ago and the Xbox Series X this year.
What is the oldest console that Cybperpunk was claimed to work on?
So it’s the Theranos of video games?
Cyberpunk 2077 looks good on Xbox One X and PS4 Pro. I’m pretty sure it can be optimized to play well on those mid-generation upgrades. But it will only get ray-tracing and/or 60 FPS framerates on next-gen consoles.
Of course, it’s nice to have the option to upgrade your PC a bit every couple years with new parts. But relatively few gamers have the money and priorities to keep their gaming rigs on the cutting edge. Most PC gamers fall somewhere in the middle specs.
Most developers seek as large an audience as possible. Consequently, the best gaming PCs offer great polish but are rarely necessary to enjoy a game.
But without the mesmerizing, if somewhat peculiar, babe.
As @jameslileks commented long ago on a different show, “psycho chicks are HOT!”
(I suppose he was expressing a more general attitude from various audiences for shows like Homeland, not his own preference. Let’s hope!)
People spend a lot on gaming consoles, but as far as I’ve seen it’s not possible to upgrade their performance with a better video card etc, as can be done with regular computers. At least if you didn’t get something too proprietary, or that won’t accept standard cards, etc.
You make some good points about the copyright strikes. It is always frustrating when devs do that. I must admit I didn’t follow that part of the story.
I dunno, too many 4chan and 4chan adjacent people were driven absolutely insane when they saw Ellie and Dina kiss- that trailer would’ve been well before the data leak. Then Abbie and jokes about her not being attractive. Then they just called it a movie, and SJW– rinse and repeat. There was this odd obsession with hating on the game well before Druckman said anything toxic. Just my take. And I feel something similar happened with Cyberpunk even if there are some legit issues with the game and its marketing/false promises. The next game on the cutting floor is I guess Vampire the Masquerade 2. You get the sense they want to see if fail and I don’t get that. I’m all for dunking on bad games. But I don’t get wanting a game to fail.
It seems that it delivers most of what was promised, but that the issues remaining are significant. No one wants to pay $60 for a game that they can almost play.