CD Projekt settles Cyberpunk 2077 lawsuit for just $1.85 million

[midian182]

What just happened? While Cyberpunk 2077 has been having a good time recently, CD Projekt continued to deal with the class-action lawsuit launched against the game over its disastrous launch 12 months ago. But that's now been resolved, and it cost the company a minuscule amount of money compared to what its RPG earned.

Cyberpunk 2077 launched on December 10, 2020, to more hype than possibly any other title in history. Sadly, the PC version was plagued with bugs and poor performance, and that was nothing compared to its state on last-gen consoles. So bad was the game on the PS4 that Sony removed it from the PlayStation Store just one week after release and only relisted it in June.

For many public investors, the painful launch was unacceptable, leading to several class-action lawsuits against CD Projekt over claims they were misled about its financial performance. Four of these suits were rolled into one, and the company entered settlement negotiations last week. It’s now agreed to pay $1.85 million in exchange for “relinquish[ing] any and all claims against the Company and members of its Management Board,” reports The Verge.

CD Projekt's share price over the last five years. Spot where Cyberpunk arrived.

While no small sum, almost $2 million is a drop in the ocean to a company like CD Projekt—Cyberpunk 2077 had a development budget of over $316 million and sold 13.7 million copies through the end of 2020. But the firm’s reputation, which was considered excellent following the success of The Witcher 3, has been irreparably damaged, and its share price is down 54% since Cyberpunk 2077 arrived. It took another blow in October after announcing that next-gen updates for both Cyberpunk and The Witcher 3 had been delayed until the second quarter of 2022.

Interestingly, Cyberpunk 2077 has seen something of a resurgence recently. It became the global top-seller on Steam last month and earned a 'Very Positive' recent reviews rating. It was also nominated for two Game Awards, though it won neither category, and was the PlayStation Store's best-selling game upon its return.

In other Cyberpunk 2077 news, we learned this week that Keanu Reeves, who portrays Johnny Silverhand in the game, has never even played it, despite CD Projekt claiming otherwise.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/92657-cd-projekt-settles-cyberpunk-2077-lawsuit-185-million.html

 

[Dimitriid]

You know in a fair world, the damages would be equivalent of the damage the management did to the stock with their incompetent scheduling so the damages should be half of the entire company's net worth or at the very least, half of all of the earnings.

Then again in a fair world you know....Workers would own the means of production in this case, the entire company so devs wouldn't be pressured to go nearly insane to meet ridiculous deadlines that feel like they were set by addressing the demands of Nvidia, Microsoft and Sony and not an actual development plan and process.

 

[rrwards]

Why would you use a 5 year chart for their stock? It's far more important to demonstrate what the release of that one game did and that would be easier to see with a smaller time frame.

 

[Burty117]

Why would you use a 5 year chart for their stock? It's far more important to demonstrate what the release of that one game did and that would be easier to see with a smaller time frame.

By using 5 years, you can see how they steadily grew and grew until Cyberpunk released and it dropped sharply and stayed there.

Why would you want to just see the month it was released? That tells you nothing other than it was a bad release.

 

[rrwards]

By using 5 years, you can see how they steadily grew and grew until Cyberpunk released and it dropped sharply and stayed there.

Why would you want to just see the month it was released? That tells you nothing other than it was a bad release.

I'd suggest using around a year or 18 months. Although this graph shows the the sharp decline, the big green 254% increase label makes it look like cyberpunk didnt hurt them at all.

 

[Shadowboxer]

You know in a fair world, the damages would be equivalent of the damage the management did to the stock with their incompetent scheduling so the damages should be half of the entire company's net worth or at the very least, half of all of the earnings.

Then again in a fair world you know....Workers would own the means of production in this case, the entire company so devs wouldn't be pressured to go nearly insane to meet ridiculous deadlines that feel like they were set by addressing the demands of Nvidia, Microsoft and Sony and not an actual development plan and process.

Are you insane? Half of their net worth because of a buggy launch? Do you want to see the world burn or something? That would destroy the company. Half the earnings would do enough to put off any video game company from releasing things at all. You must really hate gaming and gamers..

I loved cyberpunk, it was one of the best RPGs to come out for a long time. If people like you got their way we wouldn’t ever have any nice video games again!

 

[Bl00dyMinded]

The game was for $5 last week in Gamestop. I still have faith this game will get updated and be the game everyone thought it would be.

 

[Burty117]

I'd suggest using around a year or 18 months. Although this graph shows the the sharp decline, the big green 254% increase label makes it look like cyberpunk didnt hurt them at all.

I'm glad you came to the correct conclusion, just a shame you can't accept it