Following the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, Polish studio CD Projekt Red saw a significant dip in its profits year-on-year, and one of the reasons is to do with Sony's response to the game.
Cyberpunk 2077. There was a time when you would say that title out loud and a shiver would ripple throughout the crowd, reacting to the bountiful possibilities of Night City. Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the original tabletop roleplaying game, started consulting for CD Projekt Red in 2012 and over 500 employees were involved on the game across two studios. The sheer scale of it even allowed the company to receive subsidies from the country's government and it became one the most expensive games ever made with an eye-watering total of $313 million in costs.
It is quite important, therefore, that CD Projekt Red recoups those expenses through sales of Cyberpunk 2077. Unfortunately, the hype for this game went straight through to the centre of the Earth when it was found that it was not in ship-shape for release. Melting faces, teeny-tiny trees, demonic cars that would put Christine to shame, invisible weapons, gamers were appalled to discover that the game was simply not ready on last-gen consoles. The situation was so bad that Sony requested the game to be pulled from its PlayStation Store and it hasn't been reinstated since.
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Surely, you can't be serious, I hear you say. Well, we tested it across PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One X and PC, as part of our own investigation into the game. Check it out below.
Now, it has emerged that CD Projekt Red's profits took a turn for the worse when compared to the first quarter of the fiscal year in 2020. A representative for the company has said that the numbers are down by 64.7% to $8.91 million, which is a far cry from the expected statistic of $22 million. Furthermore, it was said that Cyberpunk 2077's absence on the PlayStation Store is a contributing factor to this issue, now and in the future. In the conference call, chief financial officer Piotr Nielubowicz relayed that 60% of first-quarter product sales came from the game, but these were not quantified specifically.
"The general situation as long as we are not back on the Sony store has not changed. One of the leading marketplaces for us is not available and we generate most of the sales on the PC/digital channels," explained a company official, according to Reuters. Honestly, I'm not sure what CD Projekt Red is going to do. It's got four lawsuits targeting it for minimising the problematic state of the game before its launch. It's got reports of mismanagement and crunch. It's got the costs of refunding Cyberpunk 2077 to countless players. If they manage to win back the confidence that they've lost, then there's bound to have been some dark magic involved.
Featured Image Credit: CD Projekt RedTopics: News, Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red