‘Cyberpunk 2077’ Fans Blaming Last-Gen Players Are Part of The Problem

Cyberpunk 2077 is a mess on consoles right now. There's no getting around that, sadly. While the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X can run CD Projekt RED's open-world RPG well enough, gamers playing on a standard PlayStation 4 or Xbox One have found the experience to be borderline unplayable, to the extent that CDPR has publicly held its hands up and offered refunds.

Yet it's hard not to see this as too little, too late. CDPR, that is to say the people in charge and not the development team, clearly knew the game wasn't ready on console and released it anyway. They knew the state it was in, but were happy to save that surprise until after the game had released and people had purchased it. Even the first wave of reviews were all from critics who were running the game on high-end PCs, which clearly seems to be the best way to experience the game by far.

Let me just get this one thing straight: I think it's great that there is a way for people to truly enjoy Cyberpunk 2077 the way it was meant to be enjoyed, and there are people on PC and next-gen consoles that are having fun with the game. You'd have to be a right heartless bastard to want everyone else to have a crap experience just because that's what your dealing with, right?

So no, what's really pickling my onions about this whole last-gen performance issue is the way in which there are PC gamers and next-gen console owners who are simply suggesting those of us on PS4 or Xbox One simply stop complaining and play the game on a platform that can actually run Cyberpunk 2077 properly. Seems like such a simple solution right? I bet you feel like an idiot for not thinking of that sooner.

Firstly, screw these people for even suggesting that. I guess also congratulations on the mental gymnastics required to have come down on the side of a massive corporation after they admitted to have screwed players on last-gen consoles. I think we all know which lifepath they picked when they started the game. The fact is, Cyberpunk 2077 was advertised for current-gen consoles. CD Projekt RED CEO Adam Kaciński said during an investor call not one month ago that the game runs "surprisingly well" on PS4 and Xbox One. To suggest that it was somehow the fault of console players for assuming a game would run on the machine it's been advertised for is disgusting, frankly.

Secondly, telling someone who's playing Cyberpunk 2077 on a PS4 to just upgrade to PS5 or a high-end PC is a maddening display of privilege. It'd be like telling someone whose Corsa has just broken down to get their butler to bring round the BMW instead. You can't assume that people playing on last-gen have access to this superior hardware - if they did, they'd probably already be playing it on that hardware.

We're living through hell this year, with record job losses and an economy that's basically in the toilet. If your genuine reaction to someone's disappointment that a game they've been looking forward to for the better part of a decade is a mess, is that it's their own fault for not having good enough hardware? You're an asshole, plain and simple.

At times like this, when so many gamers have objectively been screwed in quite an astounding fashion, it's important to stand together. Get mad! Not at the development team who poured their heart and souls into the game, or the gamers who rightly believed they'd be able to play on PS4 and Xbox One, but at the business practices and working conditions that allowed Cyberpunk 2077 to release on last-gen consoles in such a state in the first place.

Enjoy the game if you can, of course - but stop defending a system that let this console release happen, and stop blaming everyone except the people who are actually to blame.

Topics: News, Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red