CD Projekt Red, the studio that made Cyberpunk 2077, might be contending with legal action from its investors owing to the controversial launch of the game earlier this month.
This news comes from an article from the New York Times, which is a deep dive into what the game is, the eight years of development of that game, what the game was offering to its players, and what happened when it hit the shelves for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Stadia. "Cyberpunk's rollout is one of the most visible disasters in the history of video games - a high-profile flameout in the midst of the holiday shopping season by a studio widely considered an industry darling," reads the article. Indeed, the game was riddled with bugs when it launched for last-gen consoles, and the situation was so bad that even Oblivion players were poking fun at the state of Cyberpunk 2077.
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Even though CD Projekt Red asserted that it had been "focused on the current generation" during development, the glitches undermined this claim, and its staff had some things to say to the executives in an internal meeting. Cyberpunk 2077 developers had been enduring mandatory crunch conditions to meet the game's goals, and although they would receive bonuses, it was revealed that these dividends were dependent on the game getting a score of 90 or above on Metacritic (I'll give you a second to check its current score).
One question from the staff asked whether it was "hypocritical to make a game about corporate exploitation while expecting that their employees work overtime." Apparently, the executives didn't have a very positive answer to that. CD Projekt Red is also feeling the heat from Microsoft and Sony, due to the influx of console gamers requesting refunds for a game that doesn't run effectively on their machines. The studio assured that patches were on the way and to give the team a chance to earn consumers' trust, but it then emerged that CD Projekt Red may have misled the two companies over the state of Cyberpunk 2077 upon launch.
As a result, "lawyers and investors in Warsaw are circling the situation, contemplating a class-action lawsuit against the company." That's specifically regarding the conscious choice to promise Microsoft and Sony that the game would be sorted by December 10th when it was very likely that this would not be the case. Not regarding the inclusion of actual seizure triggers in an unskippable cutscene, and not the mismanagement of staff. Mikołaj Orzechowski, who is an investor in the studio, said that CD Projekt Red may have violated "Art. 286 of the Penal Code. - misrepresentation in order to obtain financial benefits".
Furthermore, Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP has also stated that it is "investigating a potential securities class action lawsuit against CD Projekt SA" and asks for investors who have suffered losses from the game's disastrous launch to come forward. Dearie me.
Featured Image Credit: CD Projekt RedTopics: News, Cyberpunk 2077