Some of you might recall that at one point there was a multiplayer Cyberpunk 2077 project that was in development, one that was to be embedded in the project. You might also have noticed that said multiplayer project had never amounted to anything, but as it turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, it was a victim of the single-player challenges that the core game faced and the work that had to go in at developer CD Projekt Red to right the campaign ship – that work became too great and the multiplayer work suffered for it.
Eurogamer recently had the opportunity to pick the brain of Philipp Weber, a Senior Quest Designer on Cyberpunk 2077, and is now working on a new Witcher project at the studio. In that conversation, Weber shared insight into the multiplayer project and what happened to it, when he said,
“We really needed to look at what were the priorities for Cyberpunk [after it launched]. The priority was that the main experience will run for the people in a really good state, and essentially, the switch of priorities meant that other R&D projects had to go away. With Cyberpunk, we wanted to do many things at the same time, and we just needed to really focus and say, ‘Okay, what’s the important part? Yeah, we will make that part really good.'” Weber said
The core Cyberpunk 2077 playing experience has been fixed up however, with legions of new fans coming aboard, especially following the successful launch of Netflix’s Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime series. CD Project Red have already declared their hand of upcoming releases, the majority of which are Witcher titles, including the beginning chapter in a new trilogy of games, as well as a remake of the original title The Witcher. Nestled amongst that was the news that the studio would also be working on a new game in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe, but any level of development on that game wasn’t due to begin until sometime in 2024. Recently we even learned about the developer’s intent to create a Game Of The Year edition for Cyberpunk 2077 that bundles in all additional content, similar to what they had done previously with 2015’s The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. I can’t say that I remember any major outlet giving Cyberpunk 2077 Game Of The Year, but I applaud their endeavours regardless
Cyberpunk 2077 is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC