Cyberpunk 2077 punks itself with buggy launch
Cyberpunk 2077 is probably the single most anticipated game of the year. It’s already racked up 8 million downloads, and recouped its entire production budget, since launching last Thursday. However, the rollout has not been nearly as smooth as gamers would have hoped.
It’s a buggy mess, to put it politely. Especially on older 8th generation hardware. The PS4 and Xbox One versions are limited to 720p, and even then many players have reported the frame rates dipping into the single digits. Others have noted frequent crashes to the dashboard as well as a myriad of other bugs that render parts of the game nearly unplayable.
Things aren’t much better on the graphics front, with bad texture pop in and 3D models that look like they’re straight out of the PS2 era. At least until the console manages to catch up and render the higher polygon models. It’s probably one of the ugliest and most broken console games we’ve seen released this generation. Which is certainly saying something. Players on the PC and 9th gen consoles have reported a better experience overall, but they aren’t without significant issues either.
CD Projekt Red has responded to complaints by offering full refunds to anyone who purchased the game. “We would appreciate it if you would give us a chance, but if you are not pleased with the game on your console and don’t want to wait for updates, you can opt to refund your copy,” a spokesperson said.
Refunds can be obtained through the storefront on which the game was purchased. Physical copies can be refunded the same way, though CD Projekt has asked players to contact them at helpmerefund@cdprojektred.com should those get refused. The deadline for refund requests is December 21st, 2020.
Cyberpunk 2077 was originally supposed to launch in April of this year, but was delayed until the Fall due to issueswith optimizing for 8th gen consoles. Unfortunately, it seems the problems were not resolved before the game finally got pushed out, leaving many gamers feeling as though they were lied to. Especially after the developer had promised they had achieved good performance on the older consoles. Reviewers were also reportedly told not to show their own gameplay in their a reviews. All of this has tee’d up to a major PR disaster for Polish studio. One which had been riding high off a wave of good will following the hugely successful Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
CD Projekt has promised to continue patching the game, but a fully fixed version may not be out until February. The company’s stock had dropped to $67.65 Euros at the time of writing, a 28% decline since hitting 99.80 Euros at the end of November.
