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2020 has been a great year for games, with the world trapped inside. Total spending is expected to approach $ 159 billion. But one of the most anticipated games of the year, Cyberpunk 2077, eight years in development, has been a disaster. Sony has removed the game from its online store. Xbox owner Microsoft is expanding its refund policy to cover the game. So what went so wrong?
Cyberpunk 2077 is about navigating a dystopian future where corporate power has gone haywire.
Isaac Roman, 32, is a player who had to “step down in frustration.” He’s playing on a PlayStation 5, which is the most advanced platform you can play on, and he’s still having game crashing issues.
“My first experience was, ‘Damn, this is a beautiful game. The production values are crazy, ‘”he said. “However, every half hour, he would kick me out of the game.”
Complaints about unpolished animations and glitches on older consoles have been much worse. The timing is unfortunate, because it could have been very good. See: trapped inside, 2020.
“From January to August, gaming spending increased 13% year-over-year,” said Carter Rogers, principal analyst at SuperData, a Nielsen company. Why did this happened?
“The pandemic is part of it, as it is more difficult to have people in the office to do tests,” Rogers said.
There is also a culture in the gaming industry of pushing the product too fast and pushing developers too hard, said Tracy Fullerton, director of the USC Gaming Innovation Lab.
“Crunch doesn’t work,” he said. “I mean, honestly, it’s not a new lesson. It’s something that people have been talking about for years. “
Tough on the people who make the games, and now tough on the product itself. The launch of Cyberpunk 2077 may be a reckoning for the industry.
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