CD Projekt RED has launched a new webpage outlining its commitment to restoring its reputation after last year’s disastrous Cyberpunk 2077 release. On the site, the Polish developer addresses its fans directly, outlining a roadmap for future updates to the title, as well as a personal apology by co-founder Marcin Iwinski, which we’ve embedded below:
In the video, the bigwig addresses all of the criticisms that have been aimed at the massive role-playing release. He stresses that the title’s shortcomings are not the fault of its development team, and fall directly at the feet of management – including himself. He explains that optimisation of the console versions, such as the PlayStation 4 edition, continued until days before launch – hence why review code was held back for outlets like Push Square.
Iwinski goes into a little more detail about the challenges it faced developing for Sony’s last-gen console, but he makes a few curious statements along the way. For example, he suggests that “our testing did not show many of the issues you experienced while playing the game”, which seems utterly unfathomable considering the scale and scope of the problems.
Nevertheless, he says that a new patch will launch within the coming days: “The first update will drop in the next 10 days, and it will be followed by a larger, more significant update, in the weeks after. Our plans for supporting Cyberpunk 2077 in the long-term are unchanged, and we will continue to introduce updates and patches to give all players across all consoles and PCs a better experience with the game.”
He also adds that the developer hasn’t changed its approach to the title’s previously announced free DLC, but that its “top priority” is working on patches and updates. “We will be releasing free DLC afterwards and we’ll have more to say about that in the coming months,” he promises. As previously announced, a native PS5 version will be made available as a free update, and this will launch in the second half of 2021. There’s no word on when the title will return to the PlayStation Store, although it states that it’s working with Sony to bring the game back “as soon as possible”.
Elsewhere on the website, the studio explains that it will not be “crunching” its staff in order to produce these fixes and updates, and it’ll be changing its approach with future projects. “The team is working to bring relevant fixes to the game without any obligatory overtime,” the webpage reads. “Avoiding crunch on all of our future projects is one of our top priorities.”
While we certainly saw plenty of promise in the project, we awarded it a 3/10 in our Cyberpunk 2077 PS4 review due to the scale of the issues. “Cyberpunk 2077 is a blatantly unfinished game, and the worst part is that CD Projekt has known this to be the case for quite some time,” we said. “On PS4 and PS4 Pro, poor performance comes close to wrecking the experience.”
