Cyberpunk 2077 developer’s head of studio, CD Projekt Red, has rejected claims that an E3 demo for the game was faked.
Adam Badowski posted information about the game’s creation via Twitter following an in-depth Bloomberg report that, among other things, claimed that the E3 2018 demo was “almost completely false” according to anonymous members of the development team.
Site sources claimed that the underlying gaming systems had not been coded or even completed when Cyberpunk 2077 was shown behind closed doors to the press and other industry professionals in June 2018, which is why it included features missing from the final game.
The developers said it was a “waste of months that should have gone into creating the game.”
Badowski has tweeted a statement addressing three claims in the article, beginning with the allegation that the demonstrations were falsified.
“It’s hard for a fair game demonstration not to be a vision test or a vertical split two years before the game is released, but that doesn’t mean it’s false,” he said.
“Games aren’t made in a linear way and start looking like the final product just a few months before release. If you look at this demo now, it’s different, yes, but that’s what the ‘work in progress’ watermark is for. Our finale the game looks and plays much better than it was this demonstration “.
He adds that “missing” functions are “part of the creation process,” with some being abandoned based on whether they work well as part of the final product.
Badowski also argued that the release of Cyberpunk 2077 was “disastrous,” as the article suggests, noting the critical acclaim it garnered on PC.
“As for the older generation consoles, yes, it’s another case, but so far we’ve been working on it and we’re working very hard to eliminate bugs (also on PC, we know it’s not a perfect version either) and we are proud of Cyberpunk 2077 as a game and artistic vision “.
Bloomberg notes that CD Projekt Red declined to comment or participate in the feature prior to publication.
Cyberpunk 2077 was thrown into criticism, but soon faced a backlash after reports surfaced that the console versions were so harassed by technical issues that it was said it could not be played.
Complaints about the game even caused Sony to withdraw the game from the PlayStation Store and Microsoft offered full refunds. The study also faces a class action lawsuit to distort the state of the game to investors.
CD Projekt Red has repeatedly said it is working on solutions, with two big patches pending in the next two months, and co-founder Marcin Iwiński issued another apology via video last week.
In the video, Iwiński states that the tests did not show major problems during development. Bloomberg reports that big mistakes were still discovered when Cyberpunk got the gold in October.
Apparently, the engineers also warned management that the game was too complex for Xbox One and PS4, due in part to visions of a busy science fiction metropolis. But those warnings were rejected, and management pointed to what was achieved with Witcher 3 on Microsoft and Sony devices.
The pandemic also played an important role in the issues of console editing; with the development team working remotely and testing the game on their home computers, they were unable to access the console development kits in the office and fully measure their performance on Xbox and PlayStation.
The Bloomberg article, based on interviews with more than 20 current and former CD Projekt employees, states that there were many signs that the game would struggle to meet a 2020 version.
Sources said development did not really begin until the end of 2016, despite the announcement of the game in 2012, when CDP “touched the reset button” and began changing many key parts of the project.
When the company announced the April 16, 2020 release date during E3 2019, some team members believed this was overly ambitious given the progress in the game at the time. It was considered that 2022 was more likely.
However, in his statement, Badowski states that the sentiment of more than 20 sources on this issue is not indicative of the full team of more than 500 people.
There were also stories of language barriers, with CD Projekt forcing all meetings to be held in English after the Polish studio hired several former US and Western European patents.
Bloomberg claims that this was not followed consistently, but Badowski discussed it again, adding that with 44 nationalities under study, there will have been situations where people speak their mother tongue when they are not. there is no one else around.
“Everyone here speaks English during meetings, all emails and announcements from the whole company are in English, all of this is mandatory,” he wrote. “The general rule is to switch to English when there is a person who does not speak a particular language in a casual conversation.”
The author of the report, Jason Schreier, noted on Twitter that Badowski does not directly address claims of an unrealistic timeline or “brutal cruelties” in his statement.
In the article, audio programmer Adrian Jakubiak claimed to have problems up to 13 hours a day, five days a week.
There have been multiple crisis reports in Cyberpunk 2077. Joint CEO Adam Kiciński confirmed in January 2020 that staff members had already been forced to work overtime “to a certain extent”.
In September, the study was reported to have made overtime mandatory, despite previous claims of a “non-mandatory crisis policy,” to prepare the game for the November release. The game still fell three weeks until December 10th.
Cyberpunk 2077 was delayed three times last year, but Bloomberg sources say management said delays were not an option until 2020. While the timeline seemed unrealistic, the study was eager. to release it before the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 were released or even announced it could “double up” with next-generation versions at a later date.
CD Projekt’s share price fell 30% during December, due in part to the reaction, but Bloomberg reports that they rose 6% after Iwiński’s apologies.
Despite the controversy, Cyberpunk 2077 sold over 13 million copies worldwide in the first ten days