Elon Musk has just given a turbo boost to the actions of Poland’s largest computer game maker by getting excited about CD Projekt SA’s Cyberpunk game on his Twitter account.
The company’s shares soared to 19%, the highest since June 2015 and with a transaction volume nearly six times higher than the three-month average, after the CEO of Tesla Inc. he tweeted Thursday that “the aesthetics of Cyberpunk is amazing.” Hours earlier, the billionaire had tweeted that it would be possible to play the complex and futuristic game of the new Tesla Model S Plaid.
Shares of CD Projekt have risen this week along with some of the shortest stocks in Europe in an echo of a similar concentration in the United States, where retail investors have battled short sellers by accumulating names like GameStop Corp. The Polish gaming studio has soared more than 40% in four days.
Problems with the company’s Cyberpunk game, which was released in December, caused Sony Corp to abandon the title of its PlayStation store in an unprecedented move for the industry. But the short interest in the shares did began to decline from the record level of 10% seen earlier this month. Melvin Capital Management LP has been one of the funds with a short position in the shares of CD Projekt.
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Musk showed interest in the largest production of CD Projekt in 2019. Shortly after the game was unveiled last month, he he tweeted that he touched it briefly and that “it looked pretty good.”
And the Polish game maker isn’t the only one who has benefited from Musk’s tweets this week. On Tuesday, the shares of Etsy Inc. they jumped as Musk praised the company after buying a gift on the e-commerce platform for his dog.
Shares of CD Projekt, which had plummeted after Cyberpunk’s troubled debut, ended the session up 16% more. The studio released a major patch over the weekend to address the game’s bugs, followed by a smaller fix on Thursday.
(Update shares, add trading volume, reference to Melvin Capital in the fourth paragraph.)