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That unbridled “gamer” hatred was then turned on CDPR itself, after the extent of the game’s broken nature became evident after release.ġ0. When one games journalist who personally suffered a seizure wrote about the irresponsibility of including something like that in a videogame, a few days before the game was released, she was viciously attacked by fans of the game who had never even played it yet, in a flashback to the kind of hostility and sexism seen during the heights of GamerGate.ĩ. Despite spending years in development, and despite accessibility becoming a major focus for other publishers and hardware manufacturers, the developers were so careless that they included a gameplay feature that recreates a technique used by doctors to trigger seizures in those who suffer from photosensitivity-which, yes, then caused seizures in photosensitive players of the game.Ĩ. It was clear years ago that it would have a low-brow sense of humor that routinely punched down, with rampant misogyny and transphobia, and the kind of vulgar and juvenile jokes that only seem “mature” to those weird middle school kids who like to carve naked women onto their school desks.ħ.
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With its lengthy hype cycle and years of carefully managed press touting its “groundbreaking” and “innovative” nature, Cyberpunk 2077 sold eight million copies before release-meaning it was already a smash hit before it was ever released.Ħ.
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All marketing material came from high-performance machines, which is normal in the business, but CDPR tried to exert additional control over what footage made it out to the public before release by exclusively distributing PC code to reviewers and mandating an NDA that prevented reviewers from sharing their own video footage of the game until after release.ĥ. There was no indication before the release date that the game would be significantly impaired on those older systems, with CD Projekt Red’s CEO talking as recently as late November about how “surprisingly” impressive those versions of the game were.Ĥ. Riddled with glitches and bugs on higher-end PCs and next-gen consoles, it’s downright unplayable on older consoles, especially the base model PlayStation 4 and Xbox One released at the start of the last generation in 2013.ģ. CD Projekt Red’s staff endured an extensive period of extreme crunch to ship the game, sacrificing work-life balance to push out a product that was effectively unfinished.Ģ.
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Here’s how Cyberpunk 2077 single-handedly represents everything wrong with games today.ġ. (And no, we are in no way comparing a bad game to history’s greatest monster, but if you’re looking for an example of when an “award” isn’t really an award, Time kind of set the standard back in ‘38.) Cyberpunk 2077 is the game of the year in the same way Hitler was Time’s Man of the Year in 1938-not as an award or accolade, but as a warning and admonishment to the rest of the world. Cyberpunk 2077 is truly the game of the year because it represents all the problems holding this industry back, and because the size and scope of its failure is so massive. This game is a complete debacle from almost every angle, and impressively sums up everything that needs to be changed about videogames-from how they’re made, to how they’re marketed, to who they’re made for. That Metascore? It’s now 86 for the PC version, with the console editions hovering in the 50s-an unthinkably low score for a game of this stature. The truth is that Cyberpunk 2077 has seen the most disastrous launch for a game of its size since… well, perhaps in the history of the games business. Because absolutely nothing else has gone CD Projekt Red’s way since. 8, the day after those early reviews hit, but before the game itself was released.
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After eight years of development, three delays, and countless hours of work from an overextended staff that had crunched for months on end, the biggest game of 2020 was finally out, and the designers who made it could rest on their laurels.Īt least that’s what the makers of Cyberpunk 2077 might’ve assumed on Dec. 10, riding a wave of positive advance reviews that gave it an initial Metacritic score of 91 out of 100. The Polish game studio behind The Witcher released its latest smash hit Cyberpunk 2077 on Dec. It’s been a hell of a month for CD Projekt Red.