CD Projekt RED apologizes for Cyberpunk 2077 problems and offers refunds

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It’s drama: Cyberpunk 2077 was one of the most anticipated games of the generation. Announced in May 2012, it only went into real development after 2016, based on Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk tabletop RPG and with influences from Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell and Deus Ex. When it came out on December 10, 2020, the game arrived full of bugs and with poor performance on almost every platform, especially on the base PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. On PC, the problems were smaller, but they existed.

On December 14, CD Projekt RED published a statement signed by the board on the official site. The main points:

The studio apologized for not having shown the game running on base consoles before launch, which kept players from making a more informed purchase decision.
It promised to fix bugs and crashes: a first batch of updates had already been released, another would come within 7 days, and after the holidays two big patches would follow, the first in January and the second in February.
It warned that the patches would not make the PS4 and Xbox One versions look like a high-end PC or a new console, but would get closer to that.
It offered a refund to those who did not want to wait: digital copies through the PSN or Xbox system; physical copies first at the store and, if that was not possible, through the studio’s email, with a deadline of December 21, 2020.

In the text, the company summed it up: “We should have paid more attention to making it run better on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.”

What came next

The refund process turned into a mess: many players reported difficulty, and CD Projekt later said it had no special deal with Sony or Microsoft. In December, Sony itself began offering refunds on the PlayStation Store and pulled the game, only bringing it back in June 2021. Investor class actions followed, ending in a US$ 1.85 million settlement, along with an investigation by Poland’s consumer protection office. On January 13, 2021, co-CEO Marcin Iwiński published an open message to players apologizing for the state of the game. With many updates and the 2023 Phantom Liberty expansion, the game recovered and passed 40 million copies sold.