If we’re being honest here, Cyberpunk 2077 is the perfect example of what NOT to do when you develop and launch a video game, but it is also a perfect example of what TO DO when you screw up bad enough to tick off the large-scale fanbase that you accumulated over the years. Let’s not forget that CD Projekt Red first announced the game MANY years ago and then spent an equal number of years trying to get the game to a “certain level” before it was finally shown to the public, and even then, it kept getting delayed. By the time it was released in 2020, fans wouldn’t know what awaited them.
What was “awaiting them” was a game that was so buggy that you couldn’t play it properly on consoles, and if you were a PC user, you had to have an incredibly powerful PC to handle what it was doing. So, while the game did have great sales at first, which we’ll get to, it also had an incredible amount of complaints and refunds, and certain publishers delisted it until CD Projekt Red could fix all its problems.
Fast forward to now, and things did get better, especially after a certain DLC release. And at a special chat with investors, as noted by VGC, chief creative officer, Adam Badowski talked about the confirmed sequel that is in the works right now:
“This project is on a conceptual design level right now, and it’s going to be designed by a team of veterans who were responsible for fine-tuning Cyberpunk 2077 and designing Phantom Liberty. We’re going to work out of North America, Vancouver and Boston locations, team leadership are already there. And late in 2024, we’re going to work with teams comprising several dozen people, while as a target, half of the developers are going to work out of northern US and the other half out of Poland.”
It’s wise that they’re leaning on the people who made the DLC, as that content was incredibly well-received at launch. Even CD Projekt Red admitted that the expansion content was meant to fix the main game and improve everything that fans complained about in the original campaign. Plus, there was plenty of new stuff to do, which gamers loved.
The irony is that the company also announced this today:
So yeah, the game’s sales have continued to grow over the last three years. But remember, that’s just sales. That doesn’t include the refunds that were asked for or note how the game had a surge after a certain anime “saved its butt.”
