Reflecting on the troubled launch of Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt comms boss said that the game was met with excessive criticism when it was first released.
Although he admits that the game should have been updated when it first arrived in 2020, Michał Platkow-Gilewski told GamesIndustry.biz that he believes it deserved a better reception than it did, and noted that some people jumped on the bandwagon to criticize the cause. it was fashionable to do so.
“I believe that Cyberpunk at launch was better than it received, and the initial reviews were positive,” he said. “Then it became a good thing not to love. We went from champions to zero very quickly.
“That was a difficult time. We didn’t know what was going on. We knew the game was good, yes we could improve it, yes we needed to take some time to do it, and we needed to build some more. This took us a lot of time, but I don’t believe we broke even. We were always like: Let’s do this. “
Cyberpunk 2077 was one of the most anticipated games of the last console generation, but things did not go well for CD Projekt when it arrived at the end of 2020.
After three delays, the much-anticipated RPG was released on PC and console with many technical problems, which led to refunds, the game was removed from the PlayStation Store, and CD Projekt is facing accusations that it misled investors about the title. .
Following six months of patches designed to support the game, it returned to Sony’s online marketplace in June 2021, with CD Projekt saying it believes Cyberpunk 2077 has performed “satisfactorily”.
CD Projekt is currently planning to launch an expansion of Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty in September, which it says will make a big difference to the original game.
For Platkow-Gilewski, whose job is to oversee the studio’s relationship with players, media and promoters, he hopes that the DLC will go some way to rebuilding the trust lost by some of the company’s fans.
“I was not happy with the way things turned out. I didn’t expect that,” he said. “Right away I knew we were going to come back. I loved the place we were in. I’m not talking about the top, but two years before this, we had our community, we loved them, they loved us, it was amazing to work at CD Projekt Red.
“When I was released it was difficult, but I knew that we have the same people. The players are the same… we just need to improve our relationship. All we can honestly do is give our best. I believe that we will soon be able to do this and I believe that will be a new beginning for everyone.”
Platkow-Gilewski also discussed how CD Projekt itself, which grew quickly and was known for its crunch culture, needed to improve in preparation for the release of Cyberpunk 2077.
He said: “It’s very difficult to change a company when you have to deliver something and you have a deadline. “This is not a very good time. Everyone was waiting for release.
“These changes could have been made, but [the Cyberpunk situation] it was another inspiration. It was a wake-up call, to say, let’s rebuild, rebuild, rethink… What can we learn from this? It’s not easy to fix.
“It’s not like you can decide to do something different from tomorrow. It’s a process that will probably take a lot of time, but I can see that the company is working differently than before. And no one wants to repeat the mistakes that were made. “
Phantom Liberty will also change the way Cyberpunk 2077 is played, according to CD Projekt.
In an interview this month with director Pawel Sasko and quest designer Despoina Anetaki, VGC was told that “all the main features” of the game have been “redesigned or changed in a big way”.
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