In context: Cyberpunk 2077 launched in rough shape last year, but the game was far from abandoned. Though it hasn't received anywhere near the level of support, say, No Man's Sky has (and it won't, judging by CDPR's workforce allocation charts), the devs have still done their best to make the game playable while fixing core gameplay issues. Unfortunately, actual new content is going to have to wait for quite a while: Cyberpunk 2077's first expansion won't be launching until sometime in 2023.
For those of us that played the game at launch and haven't touched it since (hoping that a DLC release DLC would bring us back), this is unfortunate news. However, if there's any studio that now understands the value and importance of releasing content when it's ready, it's CD Projekt Red.
The company was burned badly with Cyberpunk 2077's launch in December of 2020, and they likely won't want to repeat that mistake with the game's first expansion. With such a long development cycle, expectations for this first expansion are high, and CDPR is facing far more negative scrutiny than it was before 2077's release -- back when they were still the pro-consumer darlings of the industry.
As it was mentioned in @CDPROJEKTRED_IR financial call moments ago, Cyberpunk 2077's upcoming expansion will arrive in 2023. Please stay tuned for more details coming later this year 🦾 https://t.co/rq1w6RDTDL
— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) April 14, 2022
To be fair, it's not as if CD Projekt Red has been sitting on its hands this past year. As we said before, the studio has been focusing on fixing core problems with the game, patching up bugs, improving NPC and vehicle AI, and more. Many would say the game is still far from finished (the police still spawn on top of you), but it's in a much better state, and if it had been released like this, the backlash would've been far less significant.
In other words, Cyberpunk 2077 is perfectly playable now, and there are still more patches to come before the first expansion's release next year. Update 1.6 will be out in the "coming months," according to company CEO Adam Kicinski, though we're unsure of its contents.
In related news, CD Projekt Red is starting to shift its development priorities. Cyberpunk 2077's ongoing support staff has been slashed to a fraction of what it was at launch and roughly half of what it was just a few months ago. The patch team is now dwarfed by "GWENT-related projects" and the expansion's dev team. More resources have also been allocated to CD Projekt's other, unannounced titles; the trend here essentially moving in reverse to Cyberpunk 2077's support team.
We'll keep you in the loop regarding CD Projekt Red's future plans, but if you want more details on its current direction as a company, check out the studio's latest financial report.
https://www.techspot.com/news/94211-cyberpunk-2077-first-paid-expansion-coming-2023.html
