Rebellion is on the air at the Polish video game publisher CD Projekt SA after the last title of the company, long awaited and delayed three times, was thrown into scathing criticism about problems.
Frustrated and angry staff threw questions at the board during an internal video meeting Thursday that opened with management apologizing for the disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077, according to two people present. It was a suitable atmosphere for a company whose slogan was, pasted on the posters of its entire Warsaw office, “We are rebels.”
The developers asked compelling questions about the company’s reputation, unrealistic game deadlines and relentless overtime from previous months and years. Until game release on December 10th.
The meeting took place earlier Sony Corp. it’s shocking announcement that removed Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store and will offer full refunds to any customer who requests it. During the staff meeting, the directors of CD Projekt said they had reached an agreement with Sony, but did not provide details. In a Twitter post on Friday, the company said that “after our discussion with PlayStation, the decision was made to temporarily suspend the digital distribution” of the game.
A CD Projekt spokeswoman said the company would not comment on internal meeting discussions.
Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the biggest games of the year and has been a financial success as it has sold over 8 million pre-orders and set sales records for PC games. But gamers have found the game full of bugs, especially on the latest generation PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles, sending CD Projekt shares the main downhill fans and critics and describes Cyberpunk 2077 as unfinished. Shares of CD Projekt fell 12% on Friday in Warsaw, pointing to a steady decline this month that ended the year’s earnings.
During the development of Cyberpunk 2077, staff endured several periods of extraordinary extensions, including mandatory there are six weeks to go until the end of the match, according to Bloomberg. When asked about this time of crisis in the Questions and Answers, the directors said they had plans to improve production practices in the future, but did not elaborate, according to one person who was there.
An employee asked the board why he had said in January that the game was “complete and playable” when that was not true, to which the board responded that he would take responsibility. Another developer asked if the directors of CD Projekt felt it was hypocritical to play a game on corporate exploitation while waiting for its employees to work overtime. The response was vague and non-communal.
Many industry observers have wondered why it looks like Cyberpunk 2077, which was first announced in 2012 and delayed three times in 2020, is not over yet. Several current and former employees working at Cyberpunk 2077 have said the same thing: the game deadlines, set by the board, were always unrealistic. Many of the developers were clear that they needed more time.
– With the assistance of Konrad Krasuski