How did the Cyberpunk 2077 dumpster fire become one of 2021's most played games?

[yRaz]

You realise it is self published though right? There was no 3rd party publisher for them? The problem is CP2077 is only as good as maybe W2 in terms of what it does and not anywhere near to what was accomplished with W3.

That is factually incorrect. The Dev team and the publisher are different even though they are owned by a corporation of the same name. Think of how Bethesda games studios develops the games and Bethseda softworks publishes them. At least that's how it use to be before they were bought by Microsoft.

The corporation that owns CDPR was pressuring both the publishers and developers to release the game. This is made worse by the fact that they call them "teams". All of this is designed to confuse you and make it hard to find information about online. When you google it results for both pop up with information so similar you have to REALLY dig into it. The headlines that popup on google are also designed to just say either "Bethesda" or "CDPR" even though they are separate entities

 

[Fulltone]

Liked the start of the game and the graphics but the four letter word vocabulary got old really fast(imho).

 

[Michiel]

Because it was the fault of the publisher not the studio.

In this case, the studio and the publisher are the same company.

 

[Michiel]

That is factually incorrect. The Dev team and the publisher are different even though they are owned by a corporation of the same name. Think of how Bethesda games studios develops the games and Bethseda softworks publishes them. At least that's how it use to be before they were bought by Microsoft.

The corporation that owns CDPR was pressuring both the publishers and developers to release the game. This is made worse by the fact that they call them "teams". All of this is designed to confuse you and make it hard to find information about online. When you google it results for both pop up with information so similar you have to REALLY dig into it. The headlines that popup on google are also designed to just say either "Bethesda" or "CDPR" even though they are separate entities

Of course the dev team are not the same people as the publishing team and they are technically different entities. But CD Project (the publisher) own exactly ONE game developer: CD Project Red. The company started as a ditributer and making conversions/translations, then set up their own dev studio to make The Witcher which was CD Project Red. There is no other corporation that owns the publisher and pressured them. They did it to themselves. It's not like an EA or Activision who own many different dev teams and studios where one expects the possibility of a large gap between publisher expectations or demands and dev teams ability to fulfill those.

 

[yRaz]

Of course the dev team are not the same people as the publishing team and they are technically different entities. But CD Project (the publisher) own exactly ONE game developer: CD Project Red. The company started as a ditributer and making conversions/translations, then set up their own dev studio to make The Witcher which was CD Project Red. There is no other corporation that owns the publisher and pressured them. They did it to themselves. It's not like an EA or Activision who own many different dev teams and studios where one expects the possibility of a large gap between publisher expectations or demands and dev teams ability to fulfill those.

CD Project, the publisher, and CD project Red, the developer, are different companies and they are both owned by the parent company CD Project S.A. Both Companies were owned by CDP investment but in 2009 they merged with Optimus S.A., another investment firm, and created the parent company CD Project S.A., which is a publicly traded corporation. Their stock ticker is OTGLF

 

[Gimp65]

Cause we are at an all time low on quality PC games, people will still buy what there is, even tho there is alot of expensive trash games being made for the past 5 years or so. In a way the timming is pretty good now that GPU's are so expensive

 

[Gezzer]

I bought in at launch and on my PC it was great... okay parts of it were great. There were annoying bugs of course, but I only ran into one game stopping bug and it was easily fixed by turning off a steam download option (beta versions I think). Yeah, CP2077 was certainty no Witcher 3 at launch. But then again neither was Witcher 3.

https://www.thegamer.com/cyberpunk-2077-bugs-issues-witcher-3/

While Witcher 3 was less of a victim of the hype monster, fact is it could even be argued it was the biggest source of CP2077's hype, it was still anything but the great game we all so fondly remember when launched. It took a lot of post release work to get it to the state it's currently in. And it was also the source of some shady moves on the publishers part. AFAIK there was in fact crunch time, it was just "voluntary" unlike with CP2077.

The big problem as I see it is two fold. Video games have evolved to the point where we gamers have extremely high expectations that are then spurned on by publisher's marketing teams hyping the games to death. I work in unrelated retail and one thing I've learned is to under promise and over deliver. You disappoint fewer people and the ones you can come through for are overjoyed.

But game publishers left that idea behind a long time ago. In their zeal to create great numbers and profits they more and more make decisions that if not out right fraud come very close to it. But we're also to blame for it IMHO. If after being hyped into a froth of expectation what would of happened if CDPR had released a PC only version of the game? Stating that the console version just wasn't where they wanted it to be? Same outrage, different reason...

The second issue is all this isn't helped by the fact that video games have turned into a billion dollar industry. It's right up there with the big three, movies, music, and sports, if not surpassing them. This has turned them into a purely profit driven market segment, instead of one that was gamers making games for gamers. So every decision at every level is measured against profit making first and foremost. Customer satisfaction is now a distant second at best in most cases.

Will CP2077 eventually be in the same league as W3, it's possible. Will the post launch outrage be forgotten, I think much of it already has. But until us gamers stop giving into the artificial hype we're going to continue to be disappointed by game releases. As long as profit is the main motivator behind the industry we'll continue to see buggy over hyped games being released due to time constraints.

How do we gamers combat this trend? Stop buying into the hype. Stop pre-ordering. I currently boycott EA because of what a **** company they are, even when they do release a half decent game. We need to do more of this and less ranting on forums if we really want to see some change in the industry IMHO. Don't buy a product until you've seen what you're getting for your money, it's that simple...

 

[GabeBars]

So what's the lesson to be learned here? It is "Let's just launch games in alpha state like if it's final and it's ok! Everybody will buy, play and enjoy this thing one way or another!"
Seriously...

 

[DonquixoteIII]

I was a pre-release purchaser, and I will admit to SOME pre-purchaser's remorse. However, the issues on my end were mostly patching causing things to break, then having to start over... My performance was never really affected that much. Then again I have a lowly GTX 1080TI.

The issue as I saw it was CDPR holding off the release of the PC version so the teams could play catch-up to the new consoles. And trying to make a consolidated version...

Had they just released the PC version as a standalone, the console makers would have probably crushed them with lawsuits, etc... End result of trying to appease all sides was that no side was left feeling very happy. Cost CDPR dearly.

I, however, happily enjoyed the game for quite the many hours, and have it on my list of things to play when my new PC comes online.

I do like CDPR's output, and look forward to their next project.

 

[hwertz]

Don't own the game, but it looks quite fun. They had some serious launch problems (effectively trying to cram it onto consoles that it could not run well on at least without some optimizations which were not there yet at launch.) It really sounds like they bit off more than they could chew. But, a fun game is a fun game, people enjoyed it and the bugs are getting ironed out over time.

 

[Ssjrhodry]

The dumpster fire only happened for people with last gen consoles. If they hadn't tried to cater to a generation of consoles that were five years old, it wouldn't have ever been an issue. I played it on PC and I experienced a single bug that caused me to restart the game - one time, that's it, in two entire playthroughs. The game was fine if it was played on the hardware it was intended to be played on. The only mistake CDPR made was trying to release it on old consoles at all. They should have stuck to the new generation of consoles and called it a day.

 

[m3tavision]

Maybe because it's a pretty good game?

Sometimes you should put "Opinion" in your article

NO, the game itself sucks. It' success was due to ultra marketing hype and mismarketing the game. Nobody is playing that game today...

 

[MaitieS]

Because they spent more than half of overall development on marketing that is why. Such a surprise, right?

 

[Bamda]

I had zero issues with the game. I still play it from time to time. Waiting for the free DLCs.

 

[Athlonite]

The game from the get go was a dumpster fire and now after multiple patches it's a smoldering pile of crap. I still see loads of glitches and bugs and I still have 2~3 quests that can't be finished I also still have problems picking up some loot that is stuck either in or behind objects in the game and they delivered no DLC like they promised. What I'm taking away from this disaster is NEVER PRE ORDER again. At best this game was in BETA when released and at worst it was an early access ALPHA release it was never in Gold finished state and still has a long way to go to reach that state

 

[terzaerian]

The dumpster fire is more like an underground landfill fire that is the 21st century gaming industry if not, at this point, most industries in general. No need to optimize, QA, and finalize products for launch, hype it, half-*** it, rush it out the door, and use the customer to QA. Working products are secondary to meeting arbitrary launch deadlines.

Products like Cyberpunk and developers like CDPR are symptoms of the disease, not the disease itself.