'Cyberpunk 2077' Dev Stock Plummets After PlayStation Pulls Game From Store

Following a fiasco of bugs, glitches, and refunds, Cyberpunk 2077 studio CD Projekt Red has seen 22% shaved off its share prices in one week, which is an astonishing nine-month low.

Following eight years of development and three delays, Cyberpunk 2077 released for PC, Stadia, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on December 10th. "Night City is massive, full of stories, content and places to visit, but due to the sheer scale and complexity of it all, we need more time to finish playtesting, fixing and polishing," said the studio in January, when the game was allegedly "complete and playable" bar the bugs that would be addressed. "We want Cyberpunk 2077 to be our crowning achievement for this generation, and postponing launch will give us the precious months we need to make the game perfect."

In spite of the intense working practices and the hours and hours spent on refining the experience, the last-gen console versions of Cyberpunk 2077 were riddled with bugs and glitches. Players were subjected to headless NPCs, exploding cars, angry windows, melting skin, tiny trees all over the map, invisible guns, and blue screen crashes on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, making Night City a shadow of the glittering and grimy setting that was shown in previews. We spoke to a group of developers for their side of the story, and what is leading to these problems.

"Modern games can be expensive and, in difficult economic times particularly, they can be a significant outlay for someone," explained one. "So it's easy to understand some disappointment if there is a disconnect between their expectations and the experience they have. How realistic those expectations might be, and where they have come from, is another thing entirely." CD Projekt Red admitted that it might have misled Sony and Microsoft on the assurances it made over the state of the game at launch, and now, the game has been pulled from the PlayStation Store and refunds are being offered for both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players.

Truly, it's a shame for the staff caught in the crossfire of this catastrophic launch, and the numbers prove that CD Projekt Red is bearing the brunt of the backlash. After Sony announced that the game will no longer be available on its store, approximately $1.8 billion was wiped off the company's market capitalisation, and share prices dropped from $108 to $81 in only one week. In a call with investors, co-CEO Adam Kicinski pledged to rectify the errors of the game's development and launch.

"We underestimated the scale and complexity of the issues. We ignored the signals about the need for additional time to refine the game on the base last-gen consoles. It was the wrong approach and against our business philosophy," he said. "The next set of fixes will be released within the next 7 days. Big updates are planned for January and February, together with smaller fixes... We'll do everything possible to prove that we stick to our values. We truly hope that our efforts will let us rebuild the trust we have lost."

Topics: News, Cyberpunk 2077