Cyberpunk 2077 (1 Viewer)

[Jeff Cooper]

Developers were complaining about not enough time. 8 years, including massive overtime, is not enough to to deliver a video game?

Not if it's horribly mismanaged.

 

[Edwin-S]

Not if it's horribly mismanaged.

It would take something beyond mismanagement to use up 8 years and still turn out a busted product. Massive incompetence would be more in line and, in that case, Investors in that company should really be worrying.

 

[Ruz-El]

I don't think it was mismanagement or incompetence. Typically with these game cycles, the first few years is a small team doing the grunt work of building and what not with the final push with all hands on deck happening in the last one or two years. Every game released is expected to have bugs, it's too hard to play test them properly before hand for whatever reason, most likely budget and time. Which is why nearly every game has a day one patch. Remember that Tony Hawk game where you bought the disc version, it didn't have a complete playable version of the game on it?

While Cyber Punk was in production, Witcher III came out with 3 sets of DLC. most hands were keeping that going before getting full hands into Cyber.

I'm not giving them an excuse, no game should be released in that state. I'm being the devils advocate a bit by saying that this was business as usual and this kind of crunch production finally bit someone big in the ass.

 

[Sam Posten]

I’ve gone back to Valhalla. Letting them work on patching despite being able to play next gen seems wise.

 

[Sam Posten]

Cyberpunk 2077 Was Supposed to Be the Biggest Video Game of the Year. What Happened? (Published 2020)

Nearly a decade of hype led to a troubled release riddled with glitches, a livid fan base, refunds for potentially millions of players and a possible class-action lawsuit.

www.nytimes.com

 

[jcroy]

A month ago or so, this was the one game which in principle might have been able to convince me to jump back into pc gaming. (The last time I was heavily into pc gaming, was gta3 and gta vice city more than 15 years ago).

My current desktop pc is over 5 years old, and I was thinking of buying a new computer. (I usually buy a new computer every five years or so, or when the old one abruptly dies after the warranty expires).

With this huge boondoggle of a game, I'll be waiting over the next year or so before making any purchasing decisions of a new computer and video game.

 

[Bryan^H]

Sadly I think the damage is irreversible. Those that own it and are waiting, good for you. That is devotion, and most likely will be worth the wait. Those that have got a refund, and for all those that changed their mind to buy after the first few days of bad news I think will have a much more difficult time making that purchase in a few months.

Three months is a long time in the world of gaming. By the time this gets fixed, it will seem old to many gamers who will have probably moved on to other games at that point, not to mention the bad memory left in the brains of gamers associated with it.

At this time I think CDPR are facing a very tough road ahead to win back gamer confidence, and an even bigger chore of making the game "hot" again in a few months time.

 

[Dave Upton]

The game (at least on PC) is extremely enjoyable and a lot of fun. Is it incomplete compared to what we were promised? Absolutely. That doesn’t change the fact that it is a hell of a lot of fun. I’m confident CDPR will keep enhancing the game in the next 18-24 months and it will eventually resemble what we were promised. Despite that, I’m already 45 hours in and loving it.

 

[Edwin-S]

I'd like to know the breakdown in pre-order sales of the PC version versus consoles. I suspect the bulk of their sales were for consoles. They used deceptive advertising to sell the game to console owners. I'm pretty sure they have burned a lot of bridges with that gamer demographic. If people do re-purchase the game, I think it will be mostly when it comes on sale.

I've watched some of the glitch videos that have been posted and they make the game look like a complete disaster. I know it will be a long time before I put any coin down for that mess. There will have to be rave reviews of the fixes in order for me to spend anything on it and by that time a person might wait until it shows up on PS+ for free......if it ever does. CDPR has damaged a lot of its relations and not just with gamers.

 

[jcroy]

CDPR has damaged a lot of its relations and not just with gamers.

If they don't ever recover, most likely the company CDPR will end up being bought up by a competitor at a "fire sale" price.

If they file for bankruptcy first, most likely The Witcher franchise will be the only thing of value left over which will be auctioned off in a bankrupcty liquidation auction. Otherwise it appears this company doesn't have anything else of value on their books.

 

[Sam Posten]

Neither of those things are even remotely likely.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

CDPR will not disappear any time soon because they own GOG and make a ton of money off of that.

It's been rumored for a full year that the delays were due to PS4/XBO versions of the game running poorly. The fact that the game was pushed out to meet the holiday and PS5/XSX/S launch windows tells the whole story.

As for mismanagement, the game was supposedly rebooted, had lots of material abandoned (like 6 months of work just thrown out), and multiple higher-up development leads left the company over that 8 years. The game turned out to be a mess because management didn't have a good vision early enough and then needed the game to be released.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

CDPR will be just fine. Bethesda has been putting out bug riddled crap like this for a decade and is still going strong. I personally think anyone is insane in this day and age to buy a big AAA game day 1. It's standard operating procedure to rush it out the door incomplete with the intention to fix it in patches later. The days when a game is complete at release are long gone.

I will wait for the complete 'goty edition' down the road when it's been fixed and has a native ps5 release and get it on sale. I did that with the witcher and got the base game with all the dlc for like $25.

 

[Ruz-El]

I think at this point I'm going to wait for a 16bit retro version on the Switch to play it.

(I know I'm joking, but think about how cool something like that could be! )

 

[Dave Upton]

More than being a CDPR or Bethesda problem, this is an industry problem. No studio will fail because of this type of situation now, because it has become the norm.

Game studios have almost all stopped taking their time to release polished products, and it is an incessant race to the finish line, driven by revenue targets and investor owners.

Every universally loved game that has come out in the past couple of decades was released without excessive "crunch", only when the devs agreed it was ready. This includes Witcher 3, many Blizzard titles and so on. They also all have in common a realistic scope and roadmap, where the product is achievable in the time allotted. Cyberpunk 2077 definitely had some Star Citizen syndrome, and I love the aspiration - but this signals management weakness that they could not rein in scope and be realistic.

What it takes to deliver a polished, truly excellent game these days is not something that aligns with being a publicly traded entity. Until studio management is empowered to set their own dates instead of racing for an arbitrary financial quarterly filing, this will continue.

 

[Edwin-S]

I think the biggest problem with that industry is the release of incomplete games while charging prices for polished products that actually look and work like they are supposed to. Video games keep up in price. A new release console version of a game in Canada, after taxes, is approaching a $100 a crack. At prices like that a person expects what they are purchasing to look and work properly.

Can you imagine the film industry working like the VG industry does? Hey, we couldn't get all of the effects and colour timing done but we here it is and thanks for the money. Come back in a couple of months and watch the finished product.

 

[Ruz-El]

Can you imagine the film industry working like the VG industry does? Hey, we couldn't get all of the effects and colour timing done but we here it is and thanks for the money. Come back in a couple of months and watch the finished product.

I think that happened with CATS haha

 

[Edwin-S]

I think that happened with CATS haha

Caught.

I probably should have mentioned that film was an example of the film industry pulling the same stunt, but at least is not unwatchable (well, not due to technical issues anyway) whereas CP2077 is virtually unplayable for a lot of buyers.

 

[jcroy]

More than being a CDPR or Bethesda problem, this is an industry problem. No studio will fail because of this type of situation now, because it has become the norm.

Game studios have almost all stopped taking their time to release polished products, and it is an incessant race to the finish line, driven by revenue targets and investor owners.

This also happens in other areas unrelated to video games, such as some specialized book publishing niches.

More than a decade ago, I recall pencil-paper rpg game publishers which had a reputation for barely even proofreading their rushed books nor even playtesting some of the book content rulesets for problems. They didn't even bother doing corrected reprints for many of the botch books. Of the ones who cared enough, all they did was just post the "errata" sheets on their website. The companies which didn't care didn't even do that, in spite of all the complaining on their own web forums where they didn't censor/delete any posts.

As long as enough hardcore folks are willing to keep on making such purchases of incomplete/defective products without demanding repairs/refunds, this will keep on happening in any business.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Edwin - my understanding is that CATS actually was unwatchable, post-release improvements or not

A lot of games drop in price extremely fast. The rare exception is Nintendo. A $60 US release will be $45-50 within a month, $30-40 within 6 months, and $20 at about 1 year. That's a huge drop off in price and I'm not even talking about Black Friday deals.

Dave - I agree that the thing motivating CDPR was greed. Their management wanted to get the game out to make money and had less concern for the quality of the product than they should have. That said, it's the same studio/people that released The Witcher 3. The big change was that they went from a mid-size A/AA studio to a massive AAA behemoth and got greedy.

jcroy - you hit the nail on the head. The problem here is that companies are releasing incomplete/crappy products, but the reason they do it is because people keep buying them. There's no recourse against a crap game. Even worse, some people stubbornly STICK WITH THESE GAMES until they're eventually good. I'm talking about Fallout 76, FFXIV, Destiny, and now Cyberpunk 2077. (Not Anthem though, which has not turned good still.) People need to stop preordering games or be willing to risk crap like this happening over and over again.