CD Projekt Red sacrifices its reputation and its partners to save Cyberpunk 2077, and then the game is still instantly gone.

During the epidemic quarantine period, the end of the New Year year came, the weather was cold, people were sitting in the house more. During free time, people seek more entertainment. And in recent weeks, netizens can not stop talking about Cyberpunk 2077 and the plus and minus it brings. From those good and bad points, the gaming community split into two halves.

On the one hand, a lot of people are playing and enjoying all the great content that Cyberpunk 2077 has to offer. On the other hand, the community voiced heavy criticism when the developer and publisher, CD Projekt Red, released a version of the game with too many bugs, not yet optimized; many thought their eight years of waiting were wasted.

Cyberpunk 2077 with PS1 graphics on PS4.

In the past week since Cyberpunk 2077 officially launched, CD Projekt Red (CDPR) posted an official apology forum, promising a refund for gamers in need, announced to continue patching the game to Perfect game play experience. However, these actions do not erase CDPR’s intentions: they are willing to sacrifice their own reputation and the partnerships to avoid being criticized by the community for delaying the game too many times. The companions, major newspapers, many famous reviewers who sobbed Cyberpunk 2077 before the launch date were more or less affected by CDPR’s mistake.

Not long ago, CDPR continued to apologize for not publishing the game when running on previous consoles (PS4 and Xbox One) but only uploading PC version gameplay video, leading to gamers not knowing. Cyberpunk 2077 quality until the official launch date. CDPR did not specify the reason for this decision, but their intentions are obvious: they want to hide the truth, Cyberpunk 2077 performs very badly on both PS4 and Xbox One. What they can do and have renewed is just a weak apology.

CDPR makes us feel like they use reviewers to deceive players

The Cyberpunk 2077 marketing process has been meticulously crafted, in order to get the most positive feedback, while minimizing the chance of exposing obvious flaws. Here is the comment of reporter Jeff Grubb from Venture Beat, who had the opportunity to try Cyberpunk 2077 from the early days and admitted to himself that he should have asked more questions.

Before Easter, CDPR’s PR department informed the media that they would be sending out test-game code soon. Media parties can contact themselves to get trial code on all platforms including PS4, Xbox, Stadia and PC. The contact process is as simple as many times other publishers, and many make the vast majority of people confident that CDPR has a very complete version of Cyberpunk 2077, enough for them to give code. for any reviewer from any platform.

But a few days after the announcement, the CDPR PR department quietly contacted a smaller media group on a different contract: you will only receive the code if you intend to evaluate the PC version of the game.

For people in the industry, this is not strange. The need for Cyberpunk 2077 is extremely large, so the CDPR keeps the code generation secret as well. But when everything was over and the game was released, this action of CDPR could not help people feel like they were cheated.

From the time of receiving the code to the time the review is published, a gamer will have 6 days of preparation. Not much time, but this is not new, besides a reviewer can say any problems present in the game, such as bugs or sudden crashes while playing (crash).

When he turned the problem over, Jeff Grubb realized that the PR game’s actions were like a distraction tactic. With a text review, writers can attach video but only use content provided by CDPR. Again, it’s not strange: Sony often prohibits players from recording specific videos for use in writing. CDPR’s ban requirement expires before the game’s release date, but for Jeff Grubb – a reviewer who uses articles and not videos as a primary assessment tool, he doesn’t notice this and assumes everyone is playing with him. a game version with me.

After listing the CDPR’s moves in the process of giving the media reviews of the product before the launch date, he noticed the details that “led the nose”:

– Before the launch date, there was no version of Cyberpunk 2077 on both PS4 and Xbox One available on the internet.

– CDPR CEO Adam Kiciński assures investors that the game runs surprisingly smoothly on console.

– The PR program shows that they are willing to provide code for reviewers on all platforms, but then silence for PC platform reviewers to have the right to play the game.

– Videos related to bugs, crashes and other bugs are only posted two days after the first reviews are officially broadcast.

Throughout this process, CDPR never told the media and players about the current state of the game on PS4 and Xbox One – an experience that has been bad so far.

Most people who buy and pre-order Cyberpunk 2077 on consoles have no idea how bad the game is, those who play it first, knowing that assures that on the official launch date, a patch weighing more than 40Gb will solving outstanding problems. All were excited with a score of more than 90 on Metacritic and put their faith in CDPR.

Then, the incident made us feel that CDPR was treating Sony, Microsoft and users in the same way.

Jeff Grubb himself feels used; CDPR turned him into a tool to lead gamers. But think about it, the actions can completely arise from the pressure of a game development studio that has released shares: market pressure has forced them to release delicious food early. must be more mature. CDPR’s action is like a “two-sided businessman” confessing in an American action movie: “It’s just doing business.”

Empathy is not the same as ignoring mistakes. And certainly Sony and Microsoft will not sit back and watch CDPR get rid of the crime. In an apology to the community, CDPR even told gamers that they will support game purchase refunds via a separate email for this purpose (helpmerefund@cdprojektred.com), but still pushes much of the responsibility for Sony. and Microsoft. In fact, according to the content of the urgent meeting with investors earlier this week, CDPR did not even discuss with Sony and Microsoft about the refund plan. Invisible, Sony and Microsoft were put on the radar.

Currently, the two major game companies have no official response to the mention of CDPR or Cyberpunk. Sony made its first move : completely removing Cyberpunk 2077 from its store and refunding players.

Lessons learned

Before this time, CD Projekt Red was one of the most loved game developers and publishers in the community. They are creative people, with foresight, meticulously shaping a game / experience / a modern work of art to give players the best experience. The vast majority of gamers globally consider Witcher 3 a masterpiece of the era.

It’s not surprising to expect such a big Cyberpunk 2077. Then all the video reviews, introduction to the game system, the game story made us fidgety. Keanu Reeves, an actor who “went missing” for many years on the silver screen but then made a surprise and successful comeback with John Wick, suddenly became a character in the game – right at a time when both Reeves and Mr. Reeves were identified. CD Projekt Red is at its peak, creating a wave of excitement without obstacles.

Keanu Reeves suddenly appeared in Cyberpunk 2077 launch event.

Then when that wave fell, it did not bring joyful emotions like water, but the frustrating feeling when the community realized that CD Projekt Red was not the “savior” of the game industry, did not keep True to promises, blunt promises on which functions the game possesses. Projekt Red.

The two lessons are summarized like this:

– Be a wise consumer, decide to drop money according to the call of the wallet, not let emotions obscure your thoughts.

Either you leave like a hero, or live long enough to be a villain.