Cyberpunk 2077 Is Still In Limbo

At this point, it's hard not to feel some pity for CD Projekt Red's ambitious yet deeply flawed "Cyberpunk 2077." The sci-fi RPG launched with more bugs than an ant farm, causing frustrated players to demand refunds en masse. In a move that shocked gamers everywhere, Sony even yanked it from the PlayStation store in December 2020. And while patch 1.2 fixed a whole game's worth of issues and made "Cyberpunk" considerably more playable on last-gen consoles, it apparently hasn't done enough to warrant its return to the PlayStation Store.

According to VGC, during a shareholder meeting on May 24, CDPR president and joint CEO Adam Kiciński was asked to address the elephant in the room: "Cyberpunk" and its PlayStation store delisting. Although a discussion regarding a potential reinstatement of "Cyberpunk 2077" to the PlayStation store wasn't on the meeting's agenda, Kiciński provided an update — sort of.

With assistance from a translator, he explained, "Unfortunately, I have no new information in this regard. We are still in discussions and with every patch the game gets better and there is a visible progress, but as we said the decision is an exclusive decision of Sony[.]" Bleakly, he concluded, "Until then I am not able to tell you anything more."

This development — or, rather, lack thereof — doesn't bode well for the troubled title. It also begs the question: What adjustments does CDPR still need to make in order to see "Cyberpunk 2077" return to the PlayStation store?

While "Cyberpunk 2077" 1.2 went a long way towards addressing the game's many issues — from slowing down police spawn times to fixing graphical glitches — it fell short on just as many fronts. Sure, police officers stopped spawning directly behind you mere seconds after committing a crime — one of the dumbest things about "Cyberpunk 2077" — but their behavior was still unrealistic and unpredictable, popping in and out of reality and even ignoring massive crime sprees altogether.

Even so, patch 1.2 also provided a plethora of fixes to console versions of "Cyberpunk 2077," to some degree eliminating those weird, rubbery, faceless NPCs whose assets were playing catch up with the game world's loading times. But, as shown off in a video by YouTube channel Resero, the game still suffers from a visible framerate problem, with frames-per-second occasionally dropping into the teens during firefights with multiple NPCs on Xbox One S.

Realistically, only Sony knows what Sony wants. In other words, "Cyberpunk 2077" will return to the PlayStation store when Sony feels that the game has been polished to the point where the company deems it worthy of gracing the PS storefront. Until then, CD Projekt Red will likely continue to improve the game until it looks and plays something like what gamers were initially promised.