This Cyberpunk 2077 Settlement Is Turning Heads

It appears that after almost a year of litigation, CD Projekt RED is settling its class-action suit (per VGC), but the payout is not what many had expected. Players would've had to have been living under a rock for the past year not to have heard of the disastrous launch of CD Projekt RED's highly anticipated game, "Cyberpunk 2077." Though the title had been in development for what some guessed was close to a decade, "Cyberpunk 2077" was destined to fall short of the mighty expectations CD Projekt RED had crafted.

Naturally, fans went into an uproar, and it wasn't long before investors felt they'd been misled, at least in some capacity. The response was a class action lawsuit, arriving right around the same time online commenters were calling out CD Projekt RED for not only delivering but also falsely promoting an unfinished and unoptimized game.

"Cyberpunk 2077" was an ambitious title that grasped well beyond its reach. The vision CD Projekt RED had for the game, the very same they'd go on to fumble, promised an impossibly detailed and interactive world, one that reflected players' actions and was brought alive with variety. Unfortunately, players got a buggy mess, more or less unplayable on PlayStation 4, Xbox One or low to mid-end PC builds. Here's how CD Projekt RED settled its class-action lawsuit and why it's surprising onlookers.

Back in May, CD Projekt RED confirmed that the four class-action lawsuits filed by US investors had been incorporated into a single, mega lawsuit. With plaintiffs and members of the class alleging that CD Projekt RED "purposefully misled shareholders and customers," onlookers could only guess at the money investors were looking to squeeze out of the "Cyberpunk 2077" creators.

CD Projekt RED decided to settle its lawsuits with a single payout of $1.85 million. While that sum may seem like a lot to a single person, it's worth keeping in mind this is the payout for not just one, but four combined class action lawsuits. Considering these are investors taking the company to court, it's very likely they'd injected a significant amount of money into what turned out to be a flop.

In just the first month of its 2020 release, "Cyberpunk 2077" raked in over $560 million in sales alone. A fraction of that, something like a third of a single percent of first-month sales, is the amount going to those who'd invested in the game's promise. It's especially insulting considering the nearly $2.2 million CD Projekt RED spent to give players a way to refund the game. At any rate, with the lawsuits off its back and a year's worth of updates and fixes, maybe "Cyberpunk 2077" will one day become what CD Projekt RED promised.