Cyberpunk 2077: Failed Launch Reveals Industry-Wide Flaws

“Cyberpunk 2077” was always going to be highly anticipated and highly debated. But now it’s a warning.

Since Keanu Reeves appeared last year at the Electronic Entertainment Expo to announce his participation in the title, the excitement for the game has been at a level that welcomes a new Marvel movie. And the fact that it would deal with current affairs, including possibly questionable aspects of gender, race, and politics, meant that fans and the media were eager to spend time with the game.

But the game is broken.

Sony on Thursday even took the drastic measure of removing the game for the foreseeable future from its online store on PlayStation consoles. For those who have already purchased the game, Sony is granting refunds. On Friday, Microsoft responded offering fans a refund, but keeping the game available for sale on their Xbox consoles. The game’s developer, the beloved CD Projekt Red, whose “The Witcher 3” remains one of the most popular games of the just-ended console generation, has promised to fix the game.

Updates that would bring the game to a desirable state are weeks and possibly months away. CD Projekt Red, based in Warsaw, Poland stated that by February the game should have enough patches to run properly on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The game is also not without its problems on the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X (it has failed me on the first one sometimes), but it works much better on the new one hardware. Still, the new consoles, released last month, are rare. For those who play on older consoles, most gamers, “Cyberpunk 2077” exists in too fragile a state.

Sony in its statement on Thursday said that the company “strives to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction, therefore we will begin offering a full refund for all players who have purchased ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ through the PlayStation Store.” . On Friday, Microsoft wrote: “To ensure that all gamers can get the experience they expect on Xbox, we will extend our existing refund policy to offer full refunds to anyone who has purchased ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ digitally from the Microsoft Store.”

Forced to creak

For much of the past week, CD Projekt Red has been on an apology tour, even amid hype that the game received more than 8 million pre-orders. Advances in media came only on PCs, where those with high-end computers have experienced minimal problems. But the game looks and feels considerably different on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, raising questions about how the studio previewed the game and whether the project it was promoting was different from the one it would sell.

“We would like to begin by apologizing for not showing the game on the next-generation base consoles before its release and, consequently, for not allowing you to make a more informed decision about your purchase,” read a statement attributed to the executive of the company. team. “We should have paid more attention to make it work better on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One.”

The work-from-home limitations of the current COVID-19 pandemic are certainly presenting challenges in many industries, and “Cyberpunk 2077” has been subject to numerous delays over the past year. In order to achieve its final release date of December 10, the company admitted that some staff members would be forced to crunch, that is, work something like a 24-hour schedule to finish the game.

Although the game is in playable state for those with the most powerful and expensive PC technology, the decision to go ahead with a broad release of “Cyberpunk 2077” simply adds to the many questionable and unfortunate tactics of the gaming industry that have become in the norm.

Chief among them: that it’s okay to release a game in an almost finished state, knowing that in the coming months it would be a drastically different product.

While it is admirable that the game medium allows for constant updates, making games a livable job, this too takes fans for granted, believing that they will still be there when the job is done. To oversimplify it, imagine a movie released in an incomplete state, with the studio and creative team simply waiting for consumers to watch it again in six months when it’s actually finished.

‘Early access’

Some developers accept these challenges.

Games are a complex medium that brings together art, technology, and narrative components, all of which change based on the needs of the other elements and advancements in everything from computer power to game engine updates, not to mention User’s comments.

There is a practice of releasing a game in so-called “early access”, which provides a more transparent view of the development process. This year’s critically beloved hack-and-slash game “Hades,” for example, was available for purchase in pre-release form for two years before it was successfully finalized.

However, this can be a serious blow to any type of advertising and marketing campaign. The gaming industry is very secretive and often tries to turn nonsensical details like the reveal of a character’s name into news. Early access destroys this careful accumulation.

Also, when “Hades” arrived on the Nintendo Switch, it may not have been seen as a “new” game. But also, at this point, the underlying issues were resolved, and once people started playing the game, word of mouth spread that “Hades” enthusiastically merged story and game.

Personally, I avoid games released in Early Access. While it may be interesting to see how a game evolves, it just makes more sense for me to wait until the game is in the state that its developers want. It’s safe to say that “Cyberpunk 2077” isn’t there. Therefore, at this point, console owners would be advised not to play “Cyberpunk 2077” until their issues are fixed. The game that exists now will not be the same game that exists in a few months.

But the decision to rush “Cyberpunk 2077” ahead of the holidays also points to long-standing and underlying problems with how the mainstream industry views its entertainment. CD Projekt Red was aware of the game’s mishaps, even admitting that it was unable to show how the title ran on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Despite all the supposed big ideas about the future of our world that the game owns, this it’s evidence that the study ultimately considered it little more than a product, one that was so highly anticipated that consumers would overlook the fact that it wasn’t ready for prime time.

While The Times was offered interviews with the CD Projekt Red team for a story that could encompass the game’s release, I have become increasingly skeptical of the game’s features before having the ability to play it at home. Game events or previews are often carefully tailored to show a fraction of the title that works mostly well in a stitched state, with PR reps interrupting interviews whenever the conversation deviates from the specific moment of the game. game that the company has deemed safe. to cover, which are often spelled out in nondisclosure agreements that The Times cannot sign.

Instead, with no access to a PC that could run the game, we limited our coverage to an interview with Reeves. The actor was certainly interested in the power of the interactive medium and spoke curiously about how the user’s choice allowed him to essentially play multiple versions of the same character.

Reeves himself hadn’t seen the finished version of the game at the time we spoke, and acknowledged that he would need a friend more fond of the game to show him off. His interest in the game seemed fueled in part by the success CD Projekt Red had with “The Witcher 3” and in part to better understand how games would affect all media.

“I don’t know where it’s going, but I know it’s going to be crazy,” he said. “He is a good kind of puppeteer. For example, if I can play with the animation, I have more control. “

And yet it’s rare, as we just saw at this month’s Game Awards, that a developer can speak frankly about the art, theories, and policies that inform each game. In such a climate, video games are handled with the cool precision of a new tech product rather than entertainment work. Therefore, critical analysis of games is more vital than ever.

In turn, the legacy of “Cyberpunk 2077”, regardless of how it is recovered in 2021, will be remembered as the work of a studio that ignored the time that its development team needed to finish the game and, in turn, he saw his fans. and the media with cynicism, even when he courted both with a product that he specifically promoted as politically nervous. It is far from the first time it has happened, but it has rarely been done so callously.