CD Projekt was not long ago the biggest European developer in terms of market capitalization, despite only having made essentially one franchise (the trilogy of The Witcher) with an IP that was not even its own. The Polish studio had garnered an impeccable reputation with those three games, largely due to the overwhelming success of The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, and it seemed like it could do no wrong in the eyes of many gamers.
All that came crashing down following the hype and subsequent disappointment of Cyberpunk 2077’s release, which launched with many bugs and performance issues, especially on old-generation consoles. As you might remember, Sony even undertook the nearly unprecedented action of removing the game made by CD Projekt from the PlayStation Store until it was fixed.
It wasn’t until June 2021, over six months after the game’s release, that Sony allowed Cyberpunk 2077 back on the PlayStation store. By then, the studio had already considerably improved the worst issues, although the real game-changer was the combo Update 2.0 and Phantom Liberty expansion, both of which launched around a year ago to excellent critical and fan reception, not to mention sales.
In a retrospective article published by Eurogamer and focused on what transpired with Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski admitted that despite the successful turnaround of the gaming community’s sentiment, the studio may never recover the sterling reputation it once had.
At the level of the board, it was: a) the realisation of what happened, b) we self-acknowledged that what happened was a big, big challenge and a big hit for the company.
None of us were actually even thinking about it in any financial terms, but it’s a problem for the future that we were hoping to build for this company, for its perception amongst fans. And that’s something that, to be honest, we’ve probably lost forever. And yes, you can repair some things, but it’s a certain perception of the company that’s never going to come back. Is that good or bad? I don’t know, but it’s a fact.
Paweł Sasko, CD Projekt Associate Director on the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel (codenamed Project Orion and in development at the new Boston office), commented:
I accept and understand that it might be a situation that never happens for some of them. But that’s unfortunately the price we have to pay for what happened. But I hope that, throughout the work that we are doing, throughout the things we are showing, we can actually win some of those people around – and when they hear someone talking to them about the incredible experiences they can have in, let’s say Phantom Liberty, or the next Witcher, next Cyberpunk, or Hadar [CD Projekt’s new IP], at the moment when they see there’s that incredible value in that game, they will actually reach out for it, play it and enjoy it.
In a way, though, it might work out in CD Projekt’s favor. They won’t have to deal with unrealistic expectations like with Cyberpunk 2077; after all, there’s no perfect developer, and consumers should always carefully evaluate a game before purchasing it.
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