Deutsche Welle (English edition)
Cyberpunk 2077 glitches spook CD Projekt investors
CD Projekt, best known for the phenomenon The Witcher, has seen $1 billion wiped off its market value in the past week. Now Sony is pulling the firm's new game, Cyberpunk 2077, from its stores after technical glitches.
Japanese tech giant Sony Corporation said on Friday it was pulling CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 from its PlayStation Store and offering 100% refunds after reports by users and analysts of hard crashes, bugs and poor performance.
PlayStation represents twothirds of the console market and the move could cut estimates for Cyberpunk console sales by 30% to 40%, one analyst told the Bloomberg news agency. It is not known if Microsoft — the other major console provider for the game — will take a similar step.
CD Projekt's CEO Adam Kicinski was cited by PAP news agency as saying the company isn't currently holding talks with Microsoft about removing Cyberpunk from its Xbox store, although the Warsaw bourse-listed company reportedly did not pre-clear its offer of a refund with Sony or Microsoft.
The Warsaw-based developer is best known for 2015's The Witcher 3, part of a franchise that was turned into a Netflix series. The new game is set in the future in a fictional city (Night City) and features Keanu Reeves as an ingame character.
On December 10, after three missed release dates, Cyberpunk 2077 premiered globally. Analysts then estimated that CD Projekt could sell 18.5 million units of the game this year at around $50 (€45) a unit. CD Projekt's investor relations said on Twitter that the game had been preordered eight million times. The Witcher 3 achieved 1.5 million before its launch, thus making Cyberpunk 2077 the firm's biggest launch of all time.
The first reviews of the game were positive on December 7, with an average Metacritic score of 91/100. But reviews online and in the trade press have since switched to largely negative and the company was obliged to issue a public apology this week. It said in a statement it was "working hard” to bring its game back to the PlayStation store and that it had had discussions with Sony regarding a full refund for gamers who wanted one.
Blow to reputation The developer admitted in a video press conference that Cyberpunk 2077's launch has caused "the loss of gamers' trust and its reputation." It said it intended to "fix the game," though a timeline remained unclear. Analysts at MBank and VTB Capital told Bloomberg news agency they expected the game to be restored to PlayStation's store after larger fixes in early 2021.
CD Projekt CFO Piotr Nielubowicz said: "So there's no question – we definitely want to fix the game; we made a promise to gamers and we'll be doing everything to stick with it."
The firm's share price sank 29% to 313.9 zlotys (€70, $86) on December 17 from 443 zlotys on December 4. According to a report by Bloomberg, CD Projekt's founders have lost $1 billion over the past six days. Bloomberg reports that the value of the 34% stake the original four founders owned is down to $3 billion combined.