Cyberpunk 2077

New report details Cyberpunk 2077's development troubles, crunch and "almost entirely fake" E3 demo

UPDATE: CDP studio head responds, but fails to address key issues.

Source: Eurogamer

UPDATE: CD Projekt studio head Adam Badowski has responded to Bloomberg's report on the development of Cyberpunk 2077, taking issue with the description of its E3 2018 gameplay video as "almost entirely fake".

However, Badowski failed to address the allegations of crunch and Cyberpunk 2077's unrealistic release timeline detailed in Bloomberg's report.

Quote tweeting Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier, Badowski published a statement pointing out Cyberpunk 2077's demo was labelled as a "work in progress", and while it is different to the end product, "our final game looks and plays way better than that demo ever was".

Missing features, Badowski insists, were "part of the creation process". Badowski also points out the PC version of Cyberpunk 2077 received strong reviews, while admitting the console version "is another case".

ORIGINAL STORY: A new report has shed fresh light on Cyberpunk 2077's troubled development.

According to Bloomberg's development sources (paywall), Cyberpunk 2077 suffered from a raft of technical problems and unrealistic deadlines set by CD Projekt management.

Cyberpunk 2077's disastrous December 2020 launch, which revealed serious technical issues with the game on consoles, and glitches, bugs and cut content across all platforms, resulted in its removal from the PlayStation Store and a warning label on the Microsoft Store about the performance of the game on Xbox One.

This week, CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwiński addressed the events leading up to the botched launch of Cyberpunk 2077 in an attempt to explain how the game's widely lambasted Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions were released in such a poor state.

According to Iwiński, problems with the console release stemmed from Cyperpunk's "huge" scope - specifically the "multitude of custom objects, interacting systems, and mechanics" all condensed into a single big city and "in a relatively loading-free environment".

Despite the significant hardware gap, the studio believed "things did not look super difficult at first", but Iwiński conceded "time has proven that we've underestimated the task".

That proof, of course, came on launch day, when considerable criticism was immediately levied at Cyberpunk's prominent bugs and awful performance, particularly on base consoles. However, Iwiński insisted the studio's testing "did not show a big part of the issues you experienced", and that the developer saw "significant improvements each and every day" as it got closer to release and "really believed we'd deliver in the final day zero update".

However, according to Bloomberg, CD Projekt's own developers said many common problems were discovered, but the staff didn't have time to fix them before launch. According to Bloomberg's sources, CD Projekt's management dismissed concerns raised by engineers that Cyberpunk 2077 was too complex to run well on the ageing last-gen consoles.

The report also revealed that while Cyberpunk 2077 was announced in 2012, full development began in 2016 when studio head Adam Badowski took over as director and overhauled the game, including shifting it from third-person to first-person.

Bloomberg reports Cyberpunk 2077's eye-catching E3 2018 demo "was almost entirely fake". "CD Projekt hadn't yet finalised and coded the underlying gameplay systems, which is why so many features, such as car ambushes, were missing from the final product," Bloomberg said. "Developers said they felt like the demo was a waste of months that should have gone toward making the game."

Jason Schreier, author of the report, took to Twitter to reveal more, saying features originally planned for Cyberpunk 2077, such as wall-running, flying cars and ambushes were all cut during the process of development.

CD Projekt addressed the removal of the wall-running feature - shown off in gameplay demos prior to launch - in a July 2020 interview. Speaking to GameReactor, level designer Max Pears said wall-running was removed "due to design reasons".

Previous gameplay had shown player-character V using Mantis Blades to perch in hard-to-reach spots before leaping down to assassinate enemies. This never made it into the final version of the game.

Schreier also tweeted to comment on Cyberpunk 2077's disappointing police system, which "was all done at the last minute".

"As is evident by the final product, it was unclear to some of the team why they were trying to make both an RPG and a GTA with a fraction of Rockstar's staff," Schreier said.

CD Projekt's approach to crunch has come under fire in recent years. In September 2020, CD Projekt told employees it would require them to work six-day weeks until the game's November launch (it was subsequently delayed to December), breaking a previous promise not to force compulsory overtime to finish the project.

This new, compulsory overtime was paid, as is required by Polish law, but came after many employees were reportedly working long hours already.

At the time, Badowski tweeted to say: "This is one of the hardest decisions I've had to make, but everyone is well compensated for every extra hour they put in. And, like in recent years, 10 per cent of the annual profit our company generates in 2020 will be split directly among the team."

When CD Projekt delayed Cyberpunk a final time to December, it said it was struggling to ship the large number of different versions of the game it needed to have ready this year - including current and next-gen consoles, PC and Google Stadia.

Bloomberg reveals the extent of the crunch that occurred at the studio over the years, with some staff saying they felt pressured to put in extra hours by their managers or coworkers.

Thoughts now turn to CD Projekt's ongoing attempt to turn Cyberpunk 2077 around. The studio plans to release variably sized patches - intended to fix bugs and improve the experience across all platforms - "on a regular basis". The first of these is due next week, with another more significant patch to follow in the coming weeks.

But will Cyberpunk 2077 patches be enough to restore CD Projekt's reputation in the eyes of fans and investors?

Quote from QueenMaknae27

Yikes a mess. I hope they can fix the issues. I was planning on buying the game

Some of the issues seem insurmountable but I'm no game developer. I've put down the game for the time being since I do have a sizeable backlog.

Don't buy it. Right now it's a gamble. Wait until the major updates have dropped or if you have the patience, wait for at least a year. You'd probably have a better experience not to mention the game by then might not be fully priced.

Quote from crystalblues

sigh. Y'all clearly couldve hired more development members to help with the work load especially with many small studios closing right now due to the whole COVID going ons. But nope.... And now you'll just pretend y'all did nothing to contribute to the current situation

It would have been a year or two too late if they hired extra hands as soon as COVID hit global. I don't know a thing about programming however from a management standpoint, those extra help would first need to be trained and get up to speed with CDPR's pipeline (or lack thereof) and with the pandemic raging that would have provided extra challenge from working at home. At that point, probably a third of the year have already passed, there's not much else they could have done since the games was certified gold last November. Everything we have seen was probably pretty much in place at the start of last year but in a rougher shape. Most of the coding and assets were already in place.

From my totally uneducated opinion, they should have scaled their ambition back. Made a realistic goal from the get go. They tried to Rockstar the hell out of Cyberpunk. Upper management was probably too drunk from their Witcher 3 success, they bit off more than they could chew.

I don't buy their excuse they were caught unaware how rough the game is. Executives surely know. If they didn't they shouldn't have been executives in the first place. Problem was nobody in the leadership put their foot down and made a stand that the game shouldn't launch in that state as they were too beholden to their shareholders. They probably should have just told the truth, no more false deadlines, social media blackout, and deliver when its ready. They still have their GOG marketplace to tide them over.

Quote from crystalblues

Their game the Witcher 3 was very ambitious as well but I feel they handled the PR when that game had bugs much better than this. I feel the execs are just giving up on making an effort to keep long time loyalists at this point. Which is never a good thing as that usually means they have become over confident and have no quarrels about throwing out bad materials.

One of the challenges with Cyberpunk compared to the Witcher according to them is the verticality. Most of the world in the Witcher exists in one plane. Personally I can only think of the castle in Ard Skellig where it is leveled. There are probably a few others. Whereas in CP, there are numerous areas where there are 2 or 3 levels that are on top of each other with a lot of AI activity.

I think the difference with Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk is the anticipation. Before W3, the franchise was still a bit niche. Coverage was smaller. Witcher 2 did well but it was still relegated to wacky Eurojank RPGs and there are a lot of that - small Euro devs that have big ambitions but small budgets and half-realized features. Witcher 3, while it made heads turn, didn't have the burden of living up to massive expectations. Sure, they initially released the first CP teaser a year or two before Witcher 3 released but it becoming in everyone's radar probably happened after Witcher became critically acclaimed. CDPR got big overnight and I think - this is just me spitballing - they still retained the Eurojank mentality despite now playing in the big leagues. They tried to wing it and operate like a small dev when they aren't anymore.

Patch 1.1 for Cyberpunk 2077 is now available on PC, consoles and Stadia!

In this update we focused on various stability improvements, which you can find outlined in the patch notes below. We will continue this work in patch 1.2 and other upcoming updates. At the same time we will keep fixing the bugs you encounter and listening to your feedback on how to improve the overall game experience.

Stability

Various stability improvements including:

• Memory usage improvements in various systems within the game: characters, interactions, navigation, in-game videos (news, tv, etc.), foliage, laser effects, minimap, devices, AI, street traffic, environmental damage system, GPU-related, and more.
• Various crash fixes (related to, among others, loading saves, game opening/closing and Point of No Return).

Quests/Open World

• Fixed an issue where calls from Delamain would end immediately and seem like they cannot be picked up in Epistrophy.
• Fixed an issue where players would not receive calls from Delamain when approaching relevant vehicles in Epistrophy.
• Fixed an issue where the objective could get stuck on "Answer the call from Mr. Hands" in M'ap Tann Pèlen.
• Fixed an issue where Judy could teleport underground in Pyramid Song.
• Fixed an issue where it would be impossible to talk to Zen Master in Poem of The Atoms.
• Fixed an issue where Takemura wouldn't call in Down on the Street.
• Fixed an issue where Jackie could disappear in The Pickup.
• Fixed an issue where it could be impossible to get out of the car in The Beast in Me: The Big Race.
• Fixed an issue where players could stop receiving calls and messages after moving too far away from A Day In The Life area.
• Fixed an issue where opening the package wouldn't update Space Oddity.
• Retro-fixed the saves affected by a rare issue where speaking to Judy in Automatic Love would be impossible due to an invisible wall. The underlying issue is under investigation.
• Fixed an issue that prevented players from collecting the reward in Gig: Freedom of the Press. The quest will auto-complete for those who could not collect the reward previously, and the reward will be provided automatically.
• Fixed an issue where Delamain would remain silent throughout Epistrophy if the player initially refused to help him.

UI

• Fixed an issue where prompt for exiting braindance could be missing.
• Removed an invalid item from loot.

Visual

• Fixed an issue where a grenade's trajectory could be displayed in photo mode.
• Fixed particles' hue appearing pink when viewed close up.
• Fixed cars spawning incorrectly in Reported Crime: Welcome to Night City.

Achievements

• Fixed an issue where completing one of theassaults in progress in Santo Domingo would sometimes not contribute towards progression for The Jungle achievement, preventing its completion.

Miscellaneous

• Addressed the issue responsible for saves getting oversized (related to the modifier indicating if the item is crafted), and trimmed the excess size from already existing saves (note: this won’t fix PC save files corrupted before 1.06 update).
• Fixed an issue where input could stop registering upon opening the weapon wheel and performing an action.
• Fixed an issue where the "Continue" button in the Main Menu could load an end game save.

PlayStation-specific

• Performance optimization of crowds on PlayStation 4 Pro and PlayStation 5.
• Various crash fixes on PlayStation 4.

Xbox-specific

• Improved memory usage for character creation, mirrors, scanning, camera remote control, menus (inventory, map) on Xbox One, Xbox One X and Xbox One S.

PC-specific

• It will now be possible to obtain achievements while in Steam offline mode. Note: Offline mode needs to be enabled before starting the game. This change does not work retroactively.
• Addressed the game startup crashes related to loading cache on NVIDIA graphics cards.

Stadia-specific

• Concert audio should no longer be inaudible in Never Fade Away.
• Fixed corrupted textures on several melee weapons.
• Tweaked default deadzone settings to be more responsive. Note: the change will not affect settings unless they’re set to default.

Source: Cyberpunk.net

Update 1.1 Discussions

Cyberpunk subreddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/cyber…nk_update_11_patch_notes/

CD Projekt Red Forum

https://forums.cdprojektred.co…reads/patch-1-1.11075603/

Steam Discussion

https://steamcommunity.com/app…ents/3111392579686915442/

Cyberpunk 2077 Had Biggest Digital Game Launch Ever - Report

Source: GameSpot

Cyberpunk 2077's launch may have been a mess for CD Projekt Red, but the game still managed to sell an incredible number of units--and many of those were digital. According to the analytics company SuperData, the game had the biggest digital game launch of all time, even when factoring in refunded copies.

SuperData estimates that Cyberpunk 2077 sold 10.2 million digital units during its launch period, making it the biggest game launch based on both digital revenue as well as overall units sold. This number does not take into account the refunded copies, but SuperData said the difference would not be significant enough to overturn the record. SuperData has occasionally had its data disputed, as was the case with Epic Games in early 2020.

The report said about 80% of the digital sales were on PC, which could account for why the refund totals didn't make much of an impact on this record. The game's worst problems were predominantly on PS4 and Xbox One, where crashing issues and poor performance led CD Projekt to apologize and even offer its own refunds in case retailers would not accept them. The game is not currently available to buy digitally for PlayStation systems. However, you can still find retail copies.

CD Projekt Red has a long road ahead in terms of adding content to Cyberpunk 2077 as well as fixing its issues. The game's first major patch just arrived last week and appears to have introduced some new bugs. The next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions also aren't going to be ready until late this year at the earliest, and it looks like the multiplayer component won't arrive until at least 2022. It remains to be seen if interest for the franchise will still be there by that point, seeing as the launch hype has died down significantly.

Hotfix 1.12 released

This update addresses the vulnerability that could be used as part of remote code execution (including save files):

• Fixed a buffer overrun issue.
• Removed/replaced non-ASLR DLLs.