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[PC Gamer] How Cyberpunk 2077 clawed its way back from disaster to complete one of the greatest redemption arcs in gaming history

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Cyberpunk 2077 may be the most successful flop of all time. Within weeks of launch, the RPG had sold 13 million copies, even accounting for dissatisfied players refunding the game. It made its eight year budget back in a single day. But those accomplishments couldn't stop Cyberpunk from widely being seen as a disappointment.

It was buggy as hell. The last-gen console version was so bad, it was pulled from sale on PlayStation. It was briefly a particularly dangerous game for players who are prone to seizures. Some investors were so miffed at how CD Projekt Red handled the launch, they filed a class action lawsuit over the share price, which dropped from its high of $31 on December 4, 2020 to only $16 a month later. It's now down to under $9.

CD Projekt's stock price may not have recovered over the last three years, but Cyberpunk 2077 has. In his Phantom Liberty review, associate editor Ted Litchfield called the expansion "a thrilling capstone for Cyberpunk 2077's 3-year redemption arc." The big 2.0 patch released to everyone for free, meanwhile, completely remakes Cyberpunk's progression system, cyberware, vehicle combat, and police. For the last three years, CD Projekt has seemingly been determined to deliver on the potential Cyberpunk 2077 had, but failed to reach, in December 2020.

Here's how Cyberpunk clawed its way back.

December 2020: Launch and rock bottom

The cyberbest of times, the cyberworst of times: CD Projekt's big follow-up to 2015's The Witcher 3 debuted to mega sales and a mixed critical reception. There were some bombastic 9/10s, but we were cooler on Cyberpunk 2077. In our 78% review, we wrote that it was "a pretty good RPG in an amazing setting absolutely sick with bugs," highlighting that the open world of Night City was "an incredible work that the stories within never quite measure up to."

Cyberpunk 2077's quests very quickly became its least significant problem. Within a few days, CD Projekt had held an emergency call with investors, issued an apology to players who were struggling with bugs and poor performance on consoles, and the CEO admitted they'd "ignored the signals about the need for additional time to refine the game on the base last-gen consoles," where the experience was considerably worse.

The reactivity of the world, from physics to shadows to vehicle damage to bullets hitting water, becomes a major point of criticism. Almost as major as the teleporting police.

Bugs like this one and this one and all of these became meme fodder. The bad times kept rolling all month.

December 12: CD Projekt patched a graphical effect in braindances that caused a seizure for one Game Informer writer.

December 17: Cyberpunk 2077 removed from sale on the PlayStation Store, a shocking reversal for a big game, with Sony offering all players refunds.

December 10 - 23: CD Projekt releases four hotfixes before the end of the year, repairing broken save games, stopping crashes, and fixing many, many quest issues.

December 27: Class action lawsuit filed over investor damages as a result of "materially false and misleading" statements from CD Projekt as to the quality of the game on last-gen consoles.

January 2021: The mea culpa

January 13: In a post on the Cyberpunk website titled "Cyberpunk 2077 — Our commitment to quality," CD Projekt's co-founders offered their "personal explanation of what the days leading up to the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 looked like, sharing the studio’s perspective on what happened with the game on old-generation consoles."

"We never, ever intended for anything like this to happen. I assure you that we will do our best to regain your trust."

February 2021: Hacked​

February 7: CD Projekt Red suffered a hacking breach, with the hacker threatening to dump the source code of Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, and Gwent, as well as other internal documents. "Your public image will go down the shitter even more and people will see how you shitty your company functions. Investors will lose trust in your company and the stock will dive even lower!"

February 10: After CD Projekt refused to negotiate, the hacking group began leaking source code, starting with Gwent. CD Projekt fought back against the spread with DMCA takedowns.

February 24: CD Projekt announced its next patch for Cyberpunk 2077 would be delayed as a result of the hacking incident, and the overall scope of the update.

March 2021: Patch 1.2 makes a dent​

March 22: Cyberpunk's lead gameplay designer left CD Projekt Red after eight years.

March 29: The colossal patch 1.2 is still largely focused on fixing glaring bugs and issues, just like the December and January hotfixes. It fixed nearly 500. On PC, it also enabled ray tracing for AMD users and added keybind options for actions that couldn't previously be customized. It increased the spawn radius for police, a band-aid for the much-criticized teleporting cops issue. It also made some significant vehicle changes, adding a steering sensitivity option and the ability to get vehicles unstuck by rocking them back and forth.

March 30: CD Projekt had previously indicated that its next big game would be a multiplayer Cyberpunk game. On March 30 it announced that plan was scrapped.

April 2021: Baby steps

April 2: Despite the big 1.2 patch a few days earlier, we wrote that you should still wait to play Cyberpunk 2077. "After playing a couple hours with the 1.2 patch, I can't say I really noticed much of a difference," we said. "Post-patch, I still get the bug where I'm suddenly thrown hundreds of meters away from the spot I was standing. I still regularly see NPCs floating in the air… It's just still heavily broken."

April 14: The NCPD suffered another blow in a hotfix, losing the ability to spawn in behind players on rooftops.

April 22: At the D.I.C.E. Awards, Cyberpunk was nominated for RPG of the Year. It lost to Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

May 2021: Changing hands

May 4: The Witcher 3 director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who also served as head of production on Cyberpunk 2077, left CD Projekt Red after being investigated internally for workplace bullying. While he was technically cleared in the investigation, he still resigned, apologizing "for all the bad blood" he caused.

May 27: CD Projekt announced a new game director for Cyberpunk 2077, Gabriel Amatangelo. Since then, he's gained a VP title in addition to his game director duties.

May 31: In a quarterly earnings call, CEO Adam Kiciński reiterated his commitment to Cyberpunk, stating "We intend to live up to what we promised our gamers in January."

June 2021: Back on PlayStation

June 21: Cyberpunk 2077 returns to sale on the PlayStation Store, a full six months after it was removed. In just a few days it managed to become the bestselling PS4 game of the month, despite Sony plastering the store page with this warning: "Purchase for use on PS4 systems is not recommended. For the best Cyberpunk experience on PlayStation, play on PS4 Pro and PS5 systems."

August 2021: Progress is slow

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August 17: A livestream preview of the next patch was largely not well received by players, who highlighted the need for better police and AI in general more than surface-level changes and cosmetic DLC.

August 18: Patch 1.3 launched with a trio of free DLC, including a car, jackets, and an alternate look for Johnny Silverhand. More significantly, it allowed for respeccing perk points, added database links in journal entries for more information on the characters and world of Night City, a comparison tooltip for cyberware, bulk crafting item upgrading, and kept on fixing bugs, bugs, bugs.

October 2021: Another painful delay

October 20: CD Projekt Red announces that its next batch of "updates, improvements and free DLCs" for Cyberpunk, which were all meant to be released by the end of 2021, were delayed to 2022.

December 2021: CDPR: 0, Modders: 1




December 9: At The Game Awards, Cyberpunk was nominated again for Best RPG and Best Score and Music. It lost Best RPG to Tales of Arise and the music category to Nier Replicant.

December 19: Modders add one of Cyberpunk 2077's most glaring missing features: a working metro system.

February 2022: Now that's a patch

February 15: CD Projekt Red announced and launched patch 1.5 on the same day, including free DLC and the next-gen update for console players. While it didn't fix the police system, it's otherwise exactly the kind of meaty patch people were clamoring for in August 2021. It reworked crowd and enemy AI to some extent, adding new weapons, more apartments for V to buy, the ability to change your appearance, changed the driving model, redesigned some perks, and even added a PC benchmark.

The next-gen update brought ray tracing to consoles, and a HDD mode helped the game run more effectively on old consoles and PCs.

March 2022: End of an era

March 3: CD Projekt pulled Cyberpunk and its other games from sale in Russia and Belarus after the invasion of Ukraine. As a result Cyberpunk 2077 was briefly review bombed, temporarily lowering its Recent Reviews rating on Steam to "Mixed" for the first time. Valve soon marked the reviews as off topic, removing them from the calculation.


March 21: CD Projekt announced a new Witcher game was in development, and will be using Unreal Engine 5, ditching its longtime internal REDEngine. Cyberpunk's development challenges almost certainly played a big part in CD Projekt ditching its internal technology and focusing heavily on multiple new Witcher projects.

April 2022: Oh yeah, that thing​


April 14: CD Projekt Red brought up the Cyberpunk expansion for the first time in a year, and said it's now due in 2023. At this point it was unconfirmed there would only be one expansion, but it was beginning to sound like it.

September 2022: Anime to the rescue​


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September 6: CD Projekt announced Phantom Liberty on the same day it released the Edgerunners patch (1.6), which added a transmog wardrobe to the game, cross-progression for carrying saves across platforms, easter eggs from the Edgerunners anime, and more. It also added modding tools.

In a livestream detailing the patch, game director Gabe Amatangelo also mentioned that "a complete overhaul to the cop system as well as vehicle-to-vehicle combat" were still in the works for a future patch. It would end up taking another year to arrive, but still got us excited.

September 13: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners debuted on Netflix, and it was a hit. A big one. It soon sent Cyberpunk 2077's player count shooting upward to a million a day.

By late September, Cyberpunk 2077 had crossed the milestone of 20 million sales, spurred on by the 1.6 patch and Edgerunners' popularity. Anime-themed mods dominated the Nexusmods page for weeks.

October 2022: Farewell, Stadia​

CD Projekt Red earned some brownie points by helping the dozens of Stadia gamers safely export their Cyberpunk save files before the cloud gaming service shut down. No cloud-based gamer left behind; respect.

November 2022: Lotsa eddies

November 28: CD Projekt had the best financial Q3 in its history, earning $21.8 million in profit. "The popularity of the anime series, along with the positive reception of the [Edgerunners] update, visibly affected unit sales of Cyberpunk," the company's CFO said.

December 2022: Outcooling Keanu​


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December 8: Cyberpunk showed up at The Game Awards again, but this time to reveal that Idris Elba stars in the Phantom Liberty expansion. Or, as we called him, "the only guy cooler than Keanu Reeves."

January 2023: Finally a fan favorite​


January 4: Still riding the Edgerunners wave, Cyberpunk 2077 won Steam's community-voted "Labor of Love" award. A small group of players got mad about it.

January 5: CD Projekt finally settled the class action lawsuit with disgruntled investors for $1.85 million.

January 31: A patch added DLSS 3 and Nvidia Reflex support on PC, prepping Cyberpunk for bigger technical updates to come.

April 2023: The ray tracing flex




April 11: CD Projekt Red launched patch 1.2, adding a new ray tracing "Overdrive" mode to Cyberpunk 2077. It looks spectacular.

June 2023: Phantom Liberty shapes up​


June 11: We played Phantom Liberty and came away excited to be best buds with Idris Elba, but appreciated the new area, Dogtown, even more.

July 2023: Call it a comeback​


July 14: After two and a half years, Cyberpunk's review summary on Steam ticked over to "Very Positive," meaning 80% of its 546,000 reviewers had given it the thumbs up.

July 26: Despite the positive upswing for Cyberpunk 2077 and that very profitable sales quarter in 2022, CD Projekt's stock price had continuously dropped since Cyberpunk's release. It announced plans to cut 9% of its staff as part of an "ongoing process of several deep transformations within the studio."

September 2023: Redemption road​


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September 20: Phantom Liberty reviews drop to more or less universal acclaim. We awarded it an 87%, calling it "an extra-refined bite of Cyberpunk 2077," and "finally the RPG its world and characters deserved."

Meanwhile, we've also been playing the free update 2.0, and have only good things to say about its revamped police system, way cooler cyberware, and broader RPG systems overhaul, calling 2.0 "a staggering upgrade on its own."

 
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I've been one of the few for the longest time to defend the actual game itself and Night City(best city ever made for an RPG). It's production and launch were terrible, I played the game start to finish with only the most minor of issues and it really sucked being in love with the game and then everyone else experiencing such detrimental technical issues. Damn shame, but I am glad they stuck by their game and have launched 2.0. I can't wait to play it, just have to finish Baldur's Gate 3, which I plain refuse to rush through for the sake of playing other things.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
Despite discourse, i've always liked the game. Great story, cool gameplay with a lot of options for approach, magnificent setting....

I guess it helped a lot not being particularly hyped for it and expecting the same shortcomings i saw with The Witcher 3 - which funny enough, had a lot of the same issues and still had fans of that game criticizing those very same problems in CP2077.
 
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nowhat

Member
December 17: Cyberpunk 2077 removed from sale on the PlayStation Store, a shocking reversal for a big game, with Sony offering all players refunds.
This part, like in so many other articles, misses the point. Yes, this is what happened. But why it happened was that CDPR first said everyone could get a refund. The removal from PSN was 100% retaliation by Sony.

Should Sony have a more lenient refund policy? Of course. Should Sony also curate their digital storefront better? Fuck yes (although same applies to all the alternatives). But the current refund policy is very clear and the same as it was back in December 2020: there are no refunds. (I'm pretty sure that's one of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition)
 

Thabass

Member
I love that two games I love have had a massive turn around that faired better. Cyberpunk 2077 and Final Fantasy XIV.
 

Dirk Benedict

Gold Member
I poured a lot of hours into the game. It improved a lot. This time.. it feels almost like a new game with the new 2.0 Patch. I barely recognize it on a new playthrough, after many months hiatus, after beating it. 9/10
 

acm2000

Member
I played it at launch on PC and it was probably my GOTY, looking forward to phantom liberty as I have my 100% save on Xbox but im just not sure when I will get to play it as I'm still busy with Starfield.
 

Freeman76

Member
Always had faith in CDPR. So much so when their share price tanked I invested a decent wedge in them as I knew they would turn this around. That's paid off nicely and I expect in a couple of months I can take that investment out after tripling my money. Cant ever imagine that happening with the likes of Ubisoft 🤣
 

artsi

Member
PC version was very good from the start, and it's a lot better now.
Even during launch month CP2077 was higher rated (85% positive) compared to Starfield (75%) on Steam. Right now it stands at 90%.

Most bad rep comes from the PS4 and XONE versions that should have been cancelled.
It was the right choice to drop their support in 2.0 so they could add all the features they wanted to using more CPU, RAM and SSD speeds.
 
This part, like in so many other articles, misses the point. Yes, this is what happened. But why it happened was that CDPR first said everyone could get a refund. The removal from PSN was 100% retaliation by Sony.

Should Sony have a more lenient refund policy? Of course. Should Sony also curate their digital storefront better? Fuck yes (although same applies to all the alternatives). But the current refund policy is very clear and the same as it was back in December 2020: there are no refunds. (I'm pretty sure that's one of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition)
Yep sony needs the refund policy of steam. 2 hours for AAA or 40 minutes for indies able to refund with psn credit to your wallet no questions asked. The money still cycles to sony anyway.

Its one of the things I want microsoft to implement (maybe they do but its not advertised) and shout from the rooftops to make sony budge.
 

Tams

Member
The game does looked great now.

I don't understand why so much effort has been put into raytracing with seemingly zero consideration with how the human eye works.

We don't see exposure like that unless we have just come from the opposite lighting conditions, or in truly extreme lighting conditions.

The game with raytracing now looks either far too dark or blindingly bright. That' doesn't make it fun to play.
 

Pakoe

Member
This is great and all but this doesn't mean I trust CDPR anymore with their games.
They were, next to R*, the only devs I supported by blindly preordering their games. That's something I won't do anymore.
 
The reviews were not really tough on some problems that also were in the supposed to be 9/10 up to almost flawless PC version.
We kinda are lucky that they even tried to make PS4One ports and failed miserably at those. Without that major extra problem the mocking would just have been the usual rather soft RPGs are just complex monsters appeasing. Fucking that up, and subsequently forcing Sony to get angry, and tanking their stock value, made all the effort they kinda always poured into their games, now absolutely crucial, while Witcher 2 rerecording of audio or whatever was more or less a just for fun excercise to improve something that was already okay, so kinda a cosmetic change, but this time they had to properly polish it and probably postpone everything else quite some time.

Question is if they (or even other devs) really learned a lesson. I highly doubt that.
And if switching engines will not create new problems for coming titles and staying with their current kinda leading tech at least for immediate future and this gen wouldn't be better. Bethesda get's flack for using their in parts dated engine but they seem more hesitant to ever abandon it (almost like old Telltale), while CD Project already pledged to Unreal and will need to implement a lot of their tools to that thing to make it work.
 

Neolombax

Member
As far as I remember, Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't a total disaster. Wasn't it pretty good on PC? I'd say No Man's Sky had a better comeback, and the devs arent even done improving and adding stuff to it.
 

Lunarorbit

Member
Probably a good time to buy stock or no?
When I saw that it's down to $9 now I had the same thought. Witcher 3 and this game sold a ton.

They obviously know how to partner with a dope animation studio which is huge in terms of generating interest.

First person and 3rd experience. People on this thread call night city their favorite rpg cities. People still support this IP after all this shit.

Keanu and Idris. That's some firepower. The share price will probably go up after the dlc comes out too. I had a similar thought after Nintendo released the wii u and I didn't invest so this would be the time in my estimation
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
I hate this bullshit propaganda. How many times have we heard this story by now? Is this gonna be a new norm? Release a broken game, lie to your customers, disappoint everyone, but then get showered with praise a few years later when you finally finish making the damn thing?

how-high-reggie-noble.gif


Good for them for finally fixing the game, but I really have a problem with how stories like that are being framed because it only normalises the issue and encourages other publishers to pull the same tricks on us. Don't think for a second that anyone should forget about the disaster that it was 3 years ago and how they took everyone's money for an early access version without telling anyone that it's gonna be an early access.
 
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Arachnid

Member
As far as I remember, Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't a total disaster. Wasn't it pretty good on PC? I'd say No Man's Sky had a better comeback, and the devs arent even done improving and adding stuff to it.
General reviews were 9s and 10s at launch because the PC version was the only one allowed to be reviewed. CP2077 was always a great game.

It was the lower end console versions that made people flip, because CDPR hid the performance ("performance" being generous). That and all the false gameplay promises. That doesn't stop the game from being fantastic. I avoided the dev interviews so I went in with no expectations and was blown away. Others took that other part pretty personally.
 

Paasei

Member
I don’t it was as bad people said it was at the start. But then again, I have the PC version. It was far from perfect, but I still had a blast with the game. Even with the complete lack of AI the city was incredibly immersive.

I saw it as a more open and action-packed Deus Ex. Once I discovered melee with the right cyberware, I had the most fun. Including a mod that is now standard in the game: bullet deflection.
 

Dr.D00p

Member
Interesting to theorise as to whether CDPR could have survived if it bit the bullet in mid 2020 to delay the game to get it into the state it now is.

Without the distraction of fixing the console versions it probably could have had the game ready for mid to late 2022.
 
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Roni

Member
If CDPR just patches this game to work flawlessly and deliver a better next title, they're still in the same game they've always been: be ambitious, patch and stabilize, rinse and repeat.
Whoever paid attention to CDPR's previous work knew this day would come.
 
"Greatest redemption arcs in gaming history" is a bit of a stretch in my opinion.
The game was rushed and launched with several bugs, false promises/marketing and half-baked.
After 3 years of heavy damage control by CDPR, half promises were met. Most bugs were ironed out, they upgraded its graphics and so on.
NMS on the other had released tons of DLC-sized expansions for free over 7 years.

CP2077 is still way behind in comparison to NMS and since they won't make more content beyond PL release, it leaves stuff to be desired.
I still remember devs claiming the game wouldn't be ready till 2022 at the very least. I wonder how CP2077 would be received if it was released on 2022 instead.
 
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Edgelord79

Gold Member
When people say “it wasn’t as bad….” it’s clear they have a short memory. Sure game is fine on PC and it ran alright on Series X.

It wasn’t playable on a PS4 and this is a platform they released on. Very few people had a PS5 at that point. So much so the refunds were offered and Sony pulled the game (how often has that happened).

How the fuck was this not a disaster?
 

Ginzeen

Banned
When people say “it wasn’t as bad….” it’s clear they have a short memory. Sure game is fine on PC and it ran alright on Series X.

It wasn’t playable on a PS4 and this is a platform they released on. Very few people had a PS5 at that point. So much so the refunds were offered and Sony pulled the game (how often has that happened).

How the fuck was this not a disaster?
the core of the game was good. It was just plagued with bugs and poor optimizations. I played Cyberpunk on launch on pc and had very little problems. Kinda like jedi survivor on pc. Dog shit performance and rendered the game unplayable for a lot of people. But the game itself is good. Its a disaster and not at the same time. So i kinda agree with you.
 
I hate this bullshit propaganda. How many times have we heard this story by now? Is this gonna be a new norm? Release a broken game, lie to your customers, disappoint everyone, but then get showered with praise a few years later when you finally finish making the damn thing?

how-high-reggie-noble.gif


Good for them for finally fixing the game, but I really have a problem with how stories like that are being framed because it only normalises the issue and encourages other publishers to pull the same tricks on us. Don't think for a second that anyone should forget about the disaster that it was 3 years ago and how they took everyone's money for an early access version without telling anyone that it's gonna be an early access.

Not praise worthy at all. Sounds like BS narrative cause all media is doing it.

Though, at the end of the day, since they have fixed the game, will still get my money despite disastrous launch.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
I was happy for Hello Games and I'm happy for CDPR for bringing back the game to a more complete, competent state.
 

kunonabi

Member
I don't know I'm playing it now on ps5 and it's good but it's still buggy and missing alot of the cool stuff they promised. I'm not seeing anything that elevates it into something particularly special.
 

YukiOnna

Member
Despite discourse, i've always liked the game. Great story, cool gameplay with a lot of options for approach, magnificent setting....

I guess it helped a lot not being particularly hyped for it and expecting the same shortcomings i saw with The Witcher 3 - which funny enough, had a lot of the same issues and still had fans of that game criticizing those very same problems in CP2077.
Same, was a smooth experience (probably because I was on PC.) I don't really have an attachment to GTA so some of the features people wanted didn't mean much to me. It was fun and I'll take the 2.0 update to play it again sometime.

It only bodes well for the sequel now that a lot of this is in place.
 
I've been one of the few for the longest time to defend the actual game itself and Night City(best city ever made for an RPG). It's production and launch were terrible, I played the game start to finish with only the most minor of issues and it really sucked being in love with the game and then everyone else experiencing such detrimental technical issues. Damn shame, but I am glad they stuck by their game and have launched 2.0. I can't wait to play it, just have to finish Baldur's Gate 3, which I plain refuse to rush through for the sake of playing other things.
we are dozens!...

got the game day 1 on ps4, played it for at least 80 hrs to completetion, had maybe half a dozen lock-ups/crashes, & thoroughly enjoyed every minute. it was like being in a (cyber-implanted) fever dream - huge, flashy, dumb, unpredictable, & just plain over-all impressive. i've never liked witcher, & would love it if cd projekt'd drop the series, & do nothing but more cyberpunk...
 
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