Cyberpunk 2077 Reflects on Troubled Launch: CD Projekt Defends Game’s Reception

CD Projekt Reflects on Cyberpunk 2077’s Troubled Launch

Reflecting on Cyberpunk 2077’s troubled launch, CD Projekt’s communications boss argues that the game received overly harsh criticism upon its release.

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Michał Platkow-Gilewski acknowledges that the game needed improvement initially but believes it deserved a better reception. He suggests that some people jumped on the bandwagon to criticize the game because it was fashionable to do so.

“I actually believe Cyberpunk on launch was way better than it was received, and even the first reviews were positive,” he said. “Then it became a cool thing not to like it. We went from hero to zero really fast. That was the tough moment. We didn’t know what was happening. We knew that the game is great, yes we can improve it, yes we need to take time to do it, and we need to rebuild some stuff. That took us a lot of time, but I don’t believe we were ever broken. We were always like: Let’s do this.”

Cyberpunk 2077 was highly anticipated but faced significant problems when it launched in late 2020. After multiple delays, technical issues plagued the PC and console versions, leading to refunds, the game being removed from the PlayStation Store, and lawsuits alleging misleading investors regarding the game’s quality.

After six months of patches, the game returned to the PlayStation Store in June 2021, with CD Projekt stating they believed its performance had reached a satisfying level. In September, CD Projekt plans to release the Phantom Liberty expansion, which promises even more significant improvements to the base game.

Platkow-Gilewski, responsible for overseeing studio contact with players, media, and influencers, hopes the DLC will help rebuild trust with fans who have been disappointed. He says, “I was personally not happy with how things turned out. I was not expecting that. I knew immediately that we had to come back… After the release, it was tough, but I knew that we had the same people. The gamers are the same… we just need to fix our relationship. The only thing we can truly do is just deliver what we are capable of. I have a feeling that soon we will be able to do that and hopefully that will be a new beginning for everyone.”

Platkow-Gilewski also discusses how CD Projekt, which grew rapidly and became known for its crunch culture, needed to make changes leading up to Cyberpunk 2077’s release. He states, “It’s really hard to change a company when you have to deliver something and you have a deadline… But [the Cyberpunk situation] was another motivation. It was a wake-up call, to say let’s rebuild, let’s restructure, let’s rethink… what can we learn from this? It’s not an easy fix. It’s not like you can decide to do something differently starting tomorrow. It’s a process that’ll probably take a lot of time, but I can see that the company works in a different way than it used to. And no one wants to repeat the mistakes that were made.”

The Phantom Liberty expansion is expected to completely overhaul the gameplay of Cyberpunk 2077. In an interview with AsumeTech, CD Projekt’s creative director and quest designer revealed that “all the core main systems” of the game have been “redone or updated in a major way.”