Cyberpunk 2077 Studio Admits What We All Suspected

An emergency meeting between CD Projekt Red representatives and the company's shareholders has confirmed that the company knew about and concealed performance issues on last-gen systems for Cyberpunk 2077. While CD Projekt Red remains adamant that the development team believed the performance issues were fixable, CDPR admitted its failure to do so and errors in informing Microsoft and Sony of the full extent of the problems.

The meeting details come from an audio recording of the conference uploaded on CD Projekt Red's website. The link to the Dec. 14 conference's audio file was first posted on Reddit by AuroraVandomme and later transcribed by Reddit user lonchu.

At the start of the meeting, it was explained that CD Projekt Red's management board had become too focused on launching Cyberpunk 2077 after three significant delays had held the game up for almost a year. CDPR explained, "[W]e ignored the signals about the need for additional time to refine the game on the base last-gen consoles. It was the wrong approach and against our business philosophy."

Throughout the meeting, the shareholders continued to try to uncover what precisely was the reason that Cyberpunk 2077 arrived in an unfinished state for older platforms. When asked if the issue was pressure to release the game before the end of 2020 or if the team had underestimated the problems, CD Projekt Red said it was more of a misallocation of resources. Lonchu's transcript quotes, "We focused too much on PC performance and didn't bother much with last-gen consoles. There was no out of ordinary amount pressure to release the game."

The same shareholder who asked about release pressure followed up with a question about the influence of console manufacturers. Specifically, did Microsoft and Sony know about the performance issues, and if so, why did they give certification for the game to be released in that state?

A CD Projekt Red rep again took responsibility, explaining, "This is on our side. Sony and Microsoft were hoping we would fix the game on release. It's entirely on us." The versions of Cyberpunk 2077 undergoing optimization for older technology, CD Projekt Red claims, were being updated until the day the game went live. This indicates that neither console producer had a chance to fully understand how bad those issues were and had placed their faith in CD Projekt Red's ability to resolve them satisfactorily before launch.

The meeting continues with a pledge to support all versions of the game, alongside more in-depth discussions about the timelines for rolling out Cyberpunk 2077's multiplayer and future CD Projekt Red titles. While many of the admissions contained in the meeting mirror the concessions from CDPR's official apology and refund offer, the conference call is a revealing look at how a trusted developer can, perhaps unintentionally, deceive both the gaming community and their industry peers.