Technical glitches affecting CD Projekt’s Cyberpunk 2077 game have slashed more than $ 1 billion (approximately Rs. 7.3 billion rupees) from the wealth of the company’s founders. Perhaps most seriously, the quality image of the study has been altered and may not be easy to recover.
Shares of CD Projekt plummeted by a third in the past six days as the number of bugs plaguing the long-awaited futuristic game prompted an apology from the company and a refund offer from players on previous generation consoles. . Short sellers have also started targeting stocks, with short interest rising from less than 1 percent of free float in September to 8.3 percent on Monday, according to data from Markit.
The story of the college dropouts who built one of Europe’s largest gaming studios has inspired other Poles to try to emulate them, flooding the Warsaw Stock Exchange with similar offerings. The 34 percent joint stake of the founders was valued at around $ 3 billion (roughly Rs. 22.1 billion rupees) at market value on Tuesday.
The three executives, Marcin Iwinski, Adam Kicinski and Piotr Nielubowicz, along with a fourth major owner, Michal Kicinski, have joined the ranks of the wealthiest Poles thanks to a stellar rally in CD Projekt shares. However, they now face a fight to save the studio’s reputation and prove that Cyberpunk will also be playable for owners of older generation consoles, which are much more common than just released new ones.
“Now there is a huge scar on the reputation of both the studio and its management,” said Tomasz Rodak, an analyst at BOS Bank SA in an email. “In just a couple of days, CD Projekt went from the most loved studio to the most hated. Restoring trust is not impossible, but it would take a lot of time and effort. “
Estimate cuts
Analysts vary in their assessment of the lasting consequences for the study, which largely depends on the new title. They agree that the pace of bug fixes will be crucial to revenue, even when opinions on the PC version look much better. The average forecast for 12-month sales fell to 25.6 million copies from nearly 30 million copies expected before the December 10 release, according to nine updated estimates compiled by Bloomberg News. The stock stopped its free fall on Tuesday, rising 2.5 percent at 2:02 p.m. in Warsaw.
The problems are particularly acute on older-generation consoles, Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One, with reports indicating that the game engine is malfunctioning on weaker machines.
“If your only option at the moment is to play Cyberpunk 2077 on any of the base console platforms, I suggest that you not play until its many terrible performance issues are fixed,” said popular gaming website IGN, recommending to players for a refund. The site separated its mostly positive PC review from the negative evaluation of the console version, saying it’s “a completely different game.”
Brokers such as Morgan Stanley and Barclays Plc now predict that a multiplayer component of Cyberpunk, crucial for long-term sales, may take longer to prepare. The studio plans to release a strategy update in the first quarter of 2021.
© 2020 Bloomberg LP
Is the MacBook Air M1 the portable beast of a laptop you’ve always wanted? We talked about this on Orbital, our weekly tech podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.
.
