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TOKYO / GDANSK, Poland: Sony Corp said on Friday that it will remove CD Projekt SA’s Cyberpunk 2077 from its PlayStation Store and offer full refunds after players complained that it was riddled with bugs, reducing the value of CDs by nearly 20%. shares of the Polish firm.
The unusual move is the latest blow to Poland’s top video game maker, whose shares fell 30 percent amid fury from disappointed fans, as well as industry critics who complained they had limited access to the game. title before its release on December 10.
CD Projekt, whose stock was down 19% at 0804 GMT, said on Twitter that it was working hard to bring Cyberpunk 2077 back to the PlayStation Store as soon as possible.
The backlash against the repeatedly delayed game has led to complaints about the hype surrounding the new titles, the complicity of reviewers to push that hype, and the working environment for grassroots developers ahead of release dates.
Kacper Kopron, an analyst at brokerage Trigon DM, said Sony’s move is one of the worst-case scenarios for CD Projekt and expects expectations for console sales to drop between 30% and 40%.
“We are very disappointed by the information, which shows that the game was not ready to debut in December and the decision to launch it was a big mistake,” he said.
CD Projekt, in damage control and widely viewed as a risk of squandering fan goodwill accumulated over many years, has promised to fix the bugs through updates.
“Both the digital and physical copies of the game will have the continued support of the company and will receive future updates,” CD Projekt said in a statement.
The company added that gamers can still purchase a boxed version of the game and that all digital copies of the game sold so far through the PlayStation Store are still available for use.
(Reporting by Sam Nussey in Tokyo and Anna Pruchnicka in Gdansk; Additional reporting by Alan Charlish in Warsaw; Editing by Christopher Cushing, David Clarke and Alexander Smith)
