2020 was a massive downer of a year. The entire world essentially shut down and became quarantined thanks to the worldwide health pandemic outbreak that we’re still very much dealing with today. As for the video game industry, much like every industry, took a hit in some shape or form. Several big titles that fans were hoping to enjoy got delayed and it ultimately pushed quite a few video games into a 2021 planned launch.
That’s not surprising as about every studio had closed its doors with employees transitioning into working from home rather than under the same roof. It’s been a big change-up for a lot of folks and that meant delays to the game development progress. At any rate, most studios have since adjusted their game release dates and are working to see their projects get out into the marketplace on time.
However, not every studio delayed their game out of 2020. CD Projekt Red had been hyping up the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 for years and they kept pushing towards a launch for this game in 2020 despite the pandemic. It might have been delayed a few times within 2020, but Cyberpunk 2077 managed to be released on December 10, 2020, where it received some massive backlash from fans. There were a severe amount of bugs in the game across all platforms, but more importantly, the base models of last-generation console platforms could barely run the game.
This lead to refunds being issued out and even a public apology from the head of CD Projekt Red. With that said, investors are just as upset since the studio downplayed just how poorly the game was running on the last-generation hardware. The stock fell drastically and lawsuits against the development studio are in the works. Recently, the studio commented on the latest lawsuit that was filed within the United States District Court where the company claims that it will defend itself vigorously. Only time will tell just how the legal battle will go, but it’s clear that the studio has quite an uphill battle to go through right now in terms of legal actions and fan reception.
Source: VGC, CD Projekt Red
