According to IGN, the actual estimated sales volume of Cyberpunk 2077 as of December 20 has exceeded 13 million. This sales volume excludes all platform digital refund and return data provided by offline dealers, as well as the number of players who send "help refund" emails to CDPR.
Since its release, Cyberpunk 2077 has wandered between praise and slander.
Nearly a decade of unremitting hype, trouble free release, a large number of game bugs, extremely dissatisfied fan groups, millions of players' returns, and possible future class action litigation - this is the impression of the video game Cyberpunk 2077 today. People can't help asking, how did this game come to this point?
Propaganda and hype for nearly ten years
In 2012, CD Projekt Red (CDPR), the most successful video game company in Europe and the Polish game studio, officially announced the Cyberpunk 2077 game project for the first time. CDPR claims that this will be a gripping, free and unrestrained legend, and players will be immersed in a lifelike future world of science fiction. Since then, various impressive game trailers have been released. Including Keanu Reeves, Grimes and A SAP Rocky and other stars also praised the game. In addition, this game is often listed as the most anticipated work of the year.
Cyberpunk 2077 takes place in a dystopian future world, where digital vagrants roam in a high-risk city with independent enterprise power and use various high-tech weapons to transform and strengthen their bodies. Gamers, especially those who use Sony and Microsoft Players of the next generation of game consoles have been promised by CDPR that they will have a revolutionary gaming experience, have rich role customization options, and can freely explore in a vast world. The prospect of the game is so attractive that 8 million people have subscribed to the game before its official release.
By July 2018, people's expectations of this game have become higher and higher. A user on Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter The official account asked: "Will the game provide an expression pack?" The account responded: "The whole game will become an expression pack." Now it seems that this response is a bit prescient, although not as the game developers hope.
Since Cyberpunk 2077 was officially released on December 10 this year, thousands of gamers have created a large number of funny expression packs for the game, which are used to ridicule many bugs in the game, including small trees covering the floor of buildings, tanks falling from the sky, and game characters who remain standing without pants when riding motorcycles.
These expression packs vividly outline a bad game that can hardly be played: bugs are rampant, artificial intelligence is extremely retarded, and it is basically incompatible with the old game console. All this makes fans very angry.
This week, a large number of game players asked game dealers for refunds. Sony's customer service representatives were so busy that they once closed the company's website. Now, Sony and Microsoft both said that they would provide full refunds to users who bought the game on their websites. Sony even stopped selling the game - an unprecedented move by this game mechanism manufacturer, which fully demonstrates the bad situation Cyberpunk 2077 faced after its release
In short, the release of Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the biggest disasters in the history of video games - a game studio that is widely regarded as the industry's leading one, died out during the holiday shopping season. The disaster of this release fully shows the risks and problems faced by the game studio when making large-scale games. The production of these games often takes several years and requires hundreds of millions of investment.
Industry insiders believe that according to the past history of CDPR, Cyberpunk 2077 is likely to fail to meet people's high expectations for this game in the coming months.
Scenery of Warsaw's Game Industry
CDPR was jointly founded by Marcin Iwinski and Michal Kicinski in Warsaw in the 1990s. The two founders were high school students at that time, which coincided with the transformation and growth of the game industry. CD-ROM was still a novel and innovative product at that time. Recalling the situation at that time, Iwinski said, "At that time, we all skipped classes to play games." At that time, they mainly imported games from the United States, and then repackaged and released the imported games.
Early employees who did not want to be named said in an interview that the two company leaders were astute marketers, storytellers and visionary artists. They were enthusiastic about games, but their technical ability was really limited.
In the early stage of the company's development, CPDR produced a realistic video game of the same name based on the series of best-selling book "The Wizard" by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski. However, the first Wizards game released in 2007 can only be regarded as a low-power car at best, and the horsepower it tries to achieve is far beyond the company's capabilities. The former employee of the company who once participated in the development of the game said that the loading of the game alone would take 3-5 minutes.
According to the employees, during the game development process, CDPR tended to develop various functional features of the game itself, rather than obtain support from other more professional companies. As a result, the functional features developed by CDPR itself are often worse than those of other companies that have already perfected the same functional features.
Even so, the Wizards series has won a number of early followers and fans for CDPR. Among them, Wizard3, with its open world, grand narrative, shocking pictures and good quality, won numerous game awards and year-end awards after its release in 2015. But just like the previous Wizards 1/2, Wizards 3 also performed badly at the beginning, with many bugs, which made players feel frustrated. But in the end, most fans accepted the CDPR's game test release rule: first launch a game that is not so perfect, and then gradually improve it.
Chaotic company management
After Wizard 3, there is Cyberpunk 2077. The game development project was officially announced in 2012. In general, Cyberpunk 2077 is based on a popular desktop role-playing game in 1988. The name of this desktop game at that time was Cyberpunk. This is CDPR's first attempt to create a new, futuristic world.
The story in the game takes place in the "City of Night", a dark dystopian megacity. There, human bodies and machines are fused and reassembled into mercenaries to fight against evil corporate forces. Cyberpunk 2077 brings together some of the hottest elements in several of the greatest sci-fi movies, including The Last Century Rage, Blade Runner and The Matrix.
In order to match the sci-fi elements in the above films, CDPR also invited the famous movie star Keanu Reeves to play a core role in the game - a street rock singer. This role is similar in action to the roles played by Reeves, such as wandering veterans and Matrix World fugitive hackers. At an event in 2019, after a video exposed the role that Reeves will play, the movie star suddenly came to the center of the stage in a cloud of smoke. He declared to the audience at the scene, "When you are walking on the streets of the future city, the feeling is amazing!"
However, in CDPR company, it is totally another feeling. Game developers are increasingly worried about some of the grand promises made by the management in game marketing. A former employee said that the company made a promise to the players to provide them with a future world that can be customized and explored at will, but this promise never came true.
In 2019, the Polish game industry began to spread rumors that the development of Cyberpunk 2077 was far behind, although its release date was set in April of the next year. At that time, some board members and senior executives left the company. Some people regard this as a major bad warning signal.
CDPR employees also reported on a recruitment website that the company's internal management was extremely chaotic: the company's top management had internal strife, office rumors spread everywhere, the management often improperly set project deadlines, and employees had to "work overtime intensively" due to poor planning. Since then, more and more employees have openly complained about the company's overtime policy, and even fans of the game have begun to express concern and concern about this. Many employees were overwhelmed and finally resigned from the company.
A former employee wrote on the website: "The boss regards the company as a money making machine and does not treat employees as human beings. Employees are just a number in the report for them."
Repeated ticket skipping game release
In January this year, CDPR announced on Twitter that the release of the game would be postponed to September 17 because "a lot of work has not been completed". Then, in March, the COVID-19 began to pandemic, and CDPR had to ask employees to work at home.
The company once said that remote work would not affect the release of Cyberpunk 2077 in September, but the management finally announced that the release of the game was postponed to November 19 again in order to "fix the game loopholes". In October, the release date of the game was postponed to December 10, just in the holiday shopping season.
According to CDPR, Cyberpunk 2077 is a game that can run on multiple platforms, but players have encountered many problems in actual operation. Although the game runs well and has powerful functions on the Windows PC platform, on the PlayStation 5, Xbox and other game console platforms, the game often fails and crashes frequently. To make matters worse, this game can hardly run on old consoles like PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Generally, game developers will send copies of new games to game raters early. However, CDPR did the opposite and kept Cyberpunk 2077 secret for a long time. The company only shares the PC pre-sale version with game publishers and news organizations. It did not send the optimized PC version to game rating personnel until a few days before the game was released, but did not send the game console version.
For several months, game commentators, including media newspapers, have been trying to obtain the console version of the game. However, Stephanie Bayer, a spokesperson for CDPR, told the outside world that the company would "postpone sending the console version of Cyberpunk 2077, and only send it a few days before the official release". But in fact, the console version has not been disclosed to the outside world until the eve of the official release of the game.
Early comments on the game also mentioned some problems related to bugs, but the overall evaluation was positive. Of course, this is because the experimenter only got the optimized Windows PC version at that time, so there were fewer bugs. Until the game was released on Thursday, December 10, people were still excited about this game.
Enthusiastic fans are excited to finally play this game for the first time. A female fan said that she was surprised by the details of the game, and she liked the role customization ability of the game - even the teeth of the characters can be customized.
But then, various bugs began to emerge. The female fan reported that her character could not even complete some of the most basic tasks, such as running, dodging and picking up weapons. In addition, it is also extremely difficult to drive a car in the game, so that she feels like she is "drinking driving".
In a gunfight mission, the female fan had to sneak up and kill an enemy with a samurai knife. She said: "I can only take a knife to the gun fight, so I can't play." Finally, she had to put the game on hold. She commented, "I thought this game could rank in the top three of the console platforms, but its performance was very disappointing."
Another fan bought the PC version of the game out of his high expectations of the game and his trust in the game advertisement of Reeves. He said that he liked the story and tasks of the game, but he was often frustrated by some small bugs in the game. These bugs include that the character still keeps standing when riding a motorcycle, and often loses the current game progress for no reason and has to return to the previous game progress. He said that some of his friends had decided to return the game. He commented, "The plot of the game is really rich, but not enough attention to the details." "Obviously, the game was launched very quickly."
Game removal and full refund
Shortly after the game was launched, players began to release screenshots of various game bugs on social media. A frequent bug is that the character enters the so-called "T" position (standing with hands apart) and then suddenly takes off his pants. Other obvious bugs include people being thrown into buildings and missing, and cars exploding for no reason.
In addition, N P.C。 The behavior of (non player characters) is also very unnatural - which greatly affects the game experience. For example, a user released a game video in which he threw a grenade into the middle of the highway during the rush hour P.C。 They all opened the door at the same time, left the vehicle and crouched to hide. The whole process was like a dance arranged by a professional dance group. The scene was extremely funny.
Chris Person, the video producer, commented that "I have never seen a game with so many bugs before." He is responsible for a program dedicated to video game bugs on YouTube. However, he also said, "Sometimes, bad games are also very attractive when they are funny." Persson's recent two programs focus on the funny bugs in Cyberpunk 2077.
However, most players are very unhappy. Last Thursday, Sony announced that it would accept returns and full refunds from players, and remove the game from the company's online store. Microsoft said on Friday that it would refund the money in full, but it has not taken the game off the shelves.
CDPR also announced on Friday that if necessary, the company will "pay out of their own pocket" to give players a full refund. The company's shares have fallen 41% since the beginning of December. A company spokesman has declined to comment on a series of questions raised by the media.
Disputes also arose within CDPR. At the company meeting last Thursday, employees expressed their dissatisfaction with executives about the unrealistic deadline and marketing commitment of the project. According to media reports last Friday, the negotiations between CDPR and Sony were very tense, but the company's management was tight lipped about it. According to insiders, Sony was very angry with CDPR's initial crisis handling method.
For CDPR, the short-term prospect will be very dark - even darker than the dystopian world they have shown in the City of Night - thousands of refund requests are coming in a stream, and lawyers and investors in Warsaw are considering filing a class action lawsuit against the company. A lawyer said that CDPR's behavior was "making false statements in order to obtain economic benefits" and was a potential criminal act. Many gamers swear not to play this game until CDPR fixes all bugs.
The next few weeks will determine whether CDPR can deliver on its commitments in 2017. At that time, game players were questioning whether the game could really be released successfully. "Don't worry!" The company replied on Twitter with an oath, and it assured fans that Cyberpunk 2077 would be a great "grand" and "story driven" game.
It is reported that Cyberpunk 2077 will soon introduce game updates. CDPR hopes that these updates can improve game performance and game experience.
The Future of Cyberpunk 2077
One gamer commented on the game: "Fans learned from a large number of promotional videos about the game's grand world, various people, and exciting battles." "I thought this game would cater to the action oriented theme of the market, but after 40 hours of gaming, I found it more like a role-playing desktop game."
This is not a bad thing for people like these players. These players can play the game in a more functional way. The reason why these players like this game is precisely why many other people don't like it: non hypocrisy, non realistic sharpness, and murder under dirty neon lights. This game has indeed spent a lot of time to expand its knowledge system and enrich its role and background. For some people, understanding the fashion and culture in the game is a great success and full of fun, even though the story of the game may be very contrived and the dialogue is very rigid.
The above player also commented: "As a role-playing game, the characters in the game are the highlights of the game, although some of them still have some defects. ””The unclear marketing strategy and the bug in the game have not had such a big impact. "
For video games that already have a large fan base before the official release, a hard fight is often inevitable. Many games in the past have experienced a similar emotional transition from extreme expectation to extreme disappointment among fans. Due to the extreme emotions of fans, game developers and game critics are often bullied online by game fans.
Those games that can survive in the extreme emotions of fans can generally constantly improve themselves, thus eventually cultivating a new fan group full of love and dedication to the game. Maybe the same thing will happen to Cyberpunk 2077. Or, all the burdens and pressures make the game unbearable. Even Keanu Reeves is difficult to save. Eventually, it disappears into the game world, leaving only a legend full of warning.
