Cyberpunk 2077 Suffered From Free-For-All Production, E3 2018 Demo Was Fake

Cyberpunk 2077 went from being one of the most anticipated games of entertainment to one of the biggest disasters in gaming. The base versions of the game were unplayable at launch, reviews keys and footage were limited by reviewers to the PC platform, Microsoft and retailers offering warnings for purchasing the game, and the game was taken off the PlayStation Network. These are only a few stories and each day the issues keep mounting up with CD Projekt RED's Co-founder officially coming out to convey what happened and apologizing for Cyberpunk 2077's horrible launch. Despite this, the game sold over 13 million copies but a new report has exposed the development hell of Cyberpunk 2077.

Investigation reporter Jason Schreier best known for breaking video game disasters has a new report out. When interviewing more than 20 people at CD Projekt RED Schreier found the game has had issues since the beginning. With a free-for-all production period, a mandatory crutch that often punishes employees who didn't work overtime by placing the burden on other employees, and developing the tools needed to make the game on the fly. According to the former audio programmer for CD Projekt RED Adrian Jakubiak:

Adrian Jakubiak, a former audio programmer for CD Projekt, said one of his colleagues asked during a meeting how the company thought it would be able to pull off a technically more challenging project in the same timeframe as The Witcher. “Someone answered: ‘We'll figure it out along the way,’” he said.

What's more shocking is that the game didn't state fully development until 2016 despite being announced back in 2012. Sounds a lot like Anthem, Mass Effect Andromeda, and Dragon Age Inquisition's development process. The game went through massive changes that often had in-fighting among the game's studio head Adam Badowski and the developers. With the game being restarted in 2016.

Studio head Adam Badowski took over as director, demanding overhauls to Cyberpunk’s gameplay and story. For the next year, everything was changing, including fundamental elements like the game-play perspective. Top staff who had worked on The Witcher 3 had strong opinions on how Cyberpunk should be made, which clashed with Badowski and lead to the eventual departure of several top developers.

What's more shocking is that E3 2018 demo that shocked audiences was fake, just like Anthem and Alien's Colonial Marines promotion E3 demos. It was, according to developers, a waste of time that took months to make but when the game's release was announced developers were confused as the game was not ready. This forced the developers to remove features such as the bounty system and corrupted cops that were promised but never appeared in the game. The game, according to developers, would ideally launch in 2022 but CD Projekt wanted to capitalize on the release of next-gen systems.

CD Projekt RED is attempting to resolve the issues in the coming months. Delaying DLC to resolve the game's many issues and offering a roadmap for future updates. However, given the gravity of the situation, this should also serve as an example of what games that release in this state should result in. We've had many titles released in similar disaster states like Fallout 76, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem, Rainbow Six Siege, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Assassin's Creed Unity, and the list keeps growing. 

What's clear is that CD Projekt RED was not ready to work such a large team, which contained over 500 employees credited for Cyberpunk 2077. This played into language barriers as everyone was required to speak English creating more communication issues. The game was not ready and CD Projekt attempted to capitalize on the new generation launch despite engineers stated the game would not work on last-gen consoles and management decided to cite The Witcher 3's success as an example. Guess that BioWare Magic transferred into CD Projekt Magic.

As expected the pandemic made things worse as developers could not play the game using development kits and instead used PCs. Unable to test the PS4 and Xbox One versions effectively which plays into the Co-Founder's apology about the game being made for PC. When the game went "Gold" programmers worked harder, especially during the 3-week delay, as new game-breaking bugs were constantly being discovered and even now Schreier's sources state that some issues may be impossible to be resolved. With some developers wondering if the game will ever come back onto the digital PlayStation Store.

It's clear that Cyberpunk 2077 was mismanaged. CD Projekt simply did not have the experience to manage such a large team and this coupled with direction and heavy crunch meant this was a bomb waiting to explode. This has happened so many times before but what made this explosion much bigger was the marketing and hype surrounding the game's production. Keanu Reeves being part of the project definitely made the popularity of the title soar but overall many saw Cyberpunk 2077 as something that would change the industry and it did. In the worse possible way.

Adam Siddiqui,
Managing Editor, NoobFeed
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