Cyberpunk's disastrous launch still haunts CD Projekt Red, but hopes The Witcher 4 can win players back

[midian182]

A hot potato: Remember the excitement in the build-up to Cyberpunk 2077's release? CD Projekt Red had whipped the gaming world into a frenzy, only for it to become one of the biggest disappointments of all time. Not everyone thinks the studio has fully redeemed itself in the six years since then, including co-CEO Michał Nowakowski, but he believes those fans will be won back by The Witcher 4.

The Cyberpunk 2077 story is a familiar one. Following the disastrous launch in 2020, CDPR released numerous patches, eventually giving us the game we were expecting. The brilliant Phantom Liberty expansion briefly pushed Cyberpunk 2077 to an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam, something unimaginable a few years earlier.

In an interview with Edge, Nowakowski talked about how "heartbreaking" the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 was for the team and fans. And while you'd expect him to be happy about the way things turned out, the co-CEO has regrets.

"I'm not 100 per cent convinced we went through the full redemption arc," Nowakowski said. "I'm convinced that we lost the faith of some people indefinitely, and that's a fair thing."

But Nowakowski hopes that the wildly anticipated next Witcher game and other titles from CDPR will help win back those who've turned their backs on the Polish company.

One person who might not be won back so easily is Thomas Mahler, Moon Studios founder and director of the Ori series. In 2021, he blasted game designers who make big promises about upcoming titles only for consumers to be disappointed upon their release, calling them "snake oil salesmen." He also questioned why players forgive them so easily.

"The entire CDPR PR department took all the cues from what worked for Molyneux and Murray and just went completely apesh*t with it," Mahler wrote at the time. "Every video released by CDPR was carefully crafted to create a picture in players' minds that was just insanely compelling. They stopped just short of outright saying that this thing would cure cancer. This strategy resulted in a sensational 8 million pre-orders."

We still don't know when The Witcher 4 will arrive, but CDPR recently announced a surprise third expansion to 2015's The Witcher 3. Songs of the Past arrives next year, and, much like it did with Cyberpunk 2077 ahead of the Phantom Liberty expansion, CD Projekt is increasing the minimum PC requirements for the base game.

Cyberpunk 2077 isn't the only game that has experienced a full redemption arc, at least in most people's eyes. Sean Murray, founder of Hello Games, the studio behind No Man's Sky, hyped NMS so much before release that the studio received death threats when it was delayed by around six weeks.

But that excitement turned into disappointment after the game arrived with missing features, bugs, and other issues. The discrepancy between what we were promised and what we got led to an investigation by the UK's advertising standards agency and Valve requiring actual in-game screenshots for Steam listings.

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Cyberpunk's disastrous launch still haunts CD Projekt Red, but hopes The Witcher 4 can win players back

 

[m4a4]

Meh, I don't have much hope that The Witcher 4 will live up to expectations.

Too many signs that are pointing to them turning into another soulless western dev like BioWare, Bungie, Ubisoft, etc.

I think them pushing out a broken Cyberpunk 2077, as good as that game ended up being, was a big warning sign that things had already been changing.

 

[Kirby1]

I actually don't even think 2077 is a good game. There are so many features that they talked about pre-release that never made it into the game. It's a decent story/shooter. Horrible RPG. Most pointless upgrades of any RPG.

Phantom Liberty was so boring, didn't even finish it.

 

[yRaz]

Meh, I don't have much hope that The Witcher 4 will live up to expectations.

Too many signs that are pointing to them turning into another soulless western dev like BioWare, Bungie, Ubisoft, etc.

I think them pushing out a broken Cyberpunk 2077, as good as that game ended up being, was a big warning sign that things had already been changing.

I don't think it will happen like that. I saw a number of interviews and cyberpunk was never supposed to be lunched like that. There were investors pressing CDPR to launch the game prematurely and they never got to make the game they wanted.

Not saying CP2077 was a fantastic game, but I still enjoyed it. I feel like they were pressured to focus on graphics instead of gameplay.

 

[OortCloud]

They did fix Cyberpunk so I still have faith that lessons were learnt. As others have said the RPG in it didn't really work that well. Personally I went for the psionic stuff and was so OP halfway through that it became a bit of a pointless exercise with no real challenge. The story was interesting though and the city looked incredible.

 

[m4a4]

I don't think it will happen like that. I saw a number of interviews and cyberpunk was never supposed to be lunched like that. There were investors pressing CDPR to launch the game prematurely and they never got to make the game they wanted.

Not saying CP2077 was a fantastic game, but I still enjoyed it. I feel like they were pressured to focus on graphics instead of gameplay.

Oh I enjoyed it too (at launch on PC where it was the least broken). But it should never have been launched in that state.

All I'm saying is that, at the very least, red flags were first noticed starting at that blunder.

 

[Megalomaniac]

They did fix Cyberpunk so I still have faith that lessons were learnt. As others have said the RPG in it didn't really work that well. Personally I went for the psionic stuff and was so OP halfway through that it became a bit of a pointless exercise with no real challenge. The story was interesting though and the city looked incredible.

I can't imagine that Cyberpunk was ever going to work on PS4 or Xbox properly. I initially played it on my 3090/ 32GB DDR4/ 10TB SSD/ 5960x Core i7 and I was amazed. Most incredible game I'd ever seen. It doesn't work completely on PS5 or Xbox series X either. They have to reduce crowds and the number of people.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I don't think it will happen like that. I saw a number of interviews and cyberpunk was never supposed to be lunched like that. There were investors pressing CDPR to launch the game prematurely and they never got to make the game they wanted.

Not saying CP2077 was a fantastic game, but I still enjoyed it. I feel like they were pressured to focus on graphics instead of gameplay.

>Prematurely

Brother it was in development for 8 years. Incidents like this are why investor have abandoned gaming as an avenue and so many studios are either closing or laying off people.

I can't imagine that Cyberpunk was ever going to work on PS4 or Xbox properly. I initially played it on my 3090/ 32GB DDR4/ 10TB SSD/ 5960x Core i7 and I was amazed. Most incredible game I'd ever seen. It doesn't work completely on PS5 or Xbox series X either. They have to reduce crowds and the number of people.

People keep posting this cope, when RDR2 not only looks better, performs better, but also has way more in its world on the ps4.

A slow GPU does not make a game broken. 2077 was built on the same engine as witcher 3, which ran fine on the same consoles. This was developer incompetence, nothing wrong with the hardware.

I actually don't even think 2077 is a good game. There are so many features that they talked about pre-release that never made it into the game. It's a decent story/shooter. Horrible RPG. Most pointless upgrades of any RPG.

Phantom Liberty was so boring, didn't even finish it.

I've never understood why people liked it. The open world is a soulless husk and the story is alright but it's not some literary master class.

The endings are utterly busted too. The objectively best solution for V implies that you somehow ruin it for everyone because you don't martyr yourself for no reason.

Actual garbage writing.

 

[godrilla]

Cyberpunk 2077 HDR is still broken till this day on PC. Crazy I found the hard way upgrading from cx to c6 ( both 48 inches) with double the hdr brightness and best lg image processing to date. Also verified with top display reviewers like Vincent.

 

[Axeia]

Although Cyberpunk launched utterly broken, they did patch it to a point where it's not only worth the money but where it's imo one of the best games ever made.
It didn't quite grip me as The Witcher 3 did but still a lot more interesting than games pretending to give you choices (that end up not affecting anything). One of the biggest single player open world games whilst at the same being one of the best looking games, good storytelling on top.

Them fixing up Cyberpunk as they did and the STILL ongoing support for the Witcher 3 is why The Witcher 4 is about the only new game that has my interest (just hope my hardware can handle it, because upgrades are unaffordable). CD Projekt Red really messed up that launch with Cyberpunk but they have my interest - if they don't launch the Witcher 4 in a good state then that just means they'll miss out on full price orders. I never pre-order anything so I didn't get burned on Cyberpunk either.

At least in their games choices mean something, I'm still sour about Mass Effect 3's ending.. 3 games worth of choices resulting in a lame god child cliche and different colored endings, FU Bioware! (The only other ending in anything that is THAT bad, is the last season of Game of Thrones)

 

[NumberNine]

They had their chests puffed out during launch, but now that revenue is a trickle, they're doing some soul searching.

 

[Liranan]

Witcher 3 is the best game of all time but not interested in Ciri screaming "IT IS MA'AM" in everyone's face and crying on Reddit and Twitter that he was misgendered and dead named.

 

[guillejp]

CP2077 is just boring, stiff and dull as fck, with loads of insufferable cutscenes and exposition, while trying its hardest to pose as an immersive FPS/RPG.
THAT is my problem with the game.

 

[Nobina]

I didn't pay attention to the hype and announcements as I never do, I got the game a couple of years later and it was really good. I even replayed it at the highest difficulty and all that. Heard it was horrible at launch and they should be condemned for it, but it probably wasn't as bad as that indie dog shite space exploration game. As for The Witcher 4, it's likely going to blow because it was said TW3 was the last game, meaning this is being made solely to milk the brand. Ofcourse, there is a small chance it will be good and I'd like it to be so.