Cyberpunk 2077: Poland’s Punk project punished

Sony has “stunned” the gaming world by deciding to remove Polish software group CD Projekt’s game Cyberpunk 2077 from its online PlayStation store, say Leo Lewis and David Lee in the Financial Times.

The game, “one of the most expensive and anticipated titles in industry history”,Polish software group CD Projekt’s much-hyped game Cyberpunk 2077 was expected to sell around 30 million copies at $60 each. But Sony pulled it from stores after it was fund to be full of bugs.; eight million people pre-ordered it. But when it was released on 10 December it was lambasted for being full of “crashes, visual glitches and malfunctioning mechanics”.

The hype surrounding the game caused CD Projekt’s shares to double in 2019 and gain “more than 50% this year”, despite “hiccups” resulting from three delays, says Kasper Viita and Piotr Bujnicki on Bloomberg. The surge saw the company exceed the value of the top European developer Ubisoft Entertainment SA. However, the stock has now slumped by 50% in a matter of weeks amid fears of a brutal backlash. Even if the firm can fix the bugs and persuade Sony to sell the game again, its image has been “seriously damaged” and it will take time to regain consumers’ trust.

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The immediate future looks “dark”, say Mike Isaac and Kellen Browning in The New York Times. Already there has been “infighting and finger-pointing”, with staffers blaming executives for “unrealistic deadlines and false promises”. Many gamers are ditching Cyberpunk 2077 until it fixes all of the problems. Refund requests are “pouring in by the thousands” and lawyers are contemplating a class-action lawsuit, claiming that the group has engaged in potential “criminal misrepresentation in order to receive financial benefits”.