Cyberpunk 2077 Nine Months Later... Studio Head Quit, 99% Players Gone & Witcher 4 Concerns

the year is 2016 and cd projekt red is on top of the world following the release of the witcher 3 wild hunt and its two remarkable story dlc expansions after a decade of monster slang the award-winning developer was now moving their focus to robots and guns over the next five or so years cdpr would do everything to hype up cyberpunk 2077. they made bold promises revealed huge ambition and ultimately aimed for the moon they also took on the rest of this industry taking aim indirectly and directly at the greedy and anti-consumer business actions of companies like electronic arts cd projekt red quite literally was making a run at the top of the industry using their work on the witcher 3 to get fans investors and journalists excited for the future this was a developer that had limited experience with open world role-playing games with the witcher 3 being their first real attempt and i think it's quite obvious that most of us thought if they could do what they did with the witcher 3 well imagine what they could do with the gain knowledge and lessons that they learned from their award-winning game of the year title that was the hope the expectation gamers were not creating huge expectations out of thin air or you could argue even based on the developer's previous work these enormous expectations were set by cd projekt red themselves numerous interviews gameplay trailers investor statements social media posts big time promises big time celebs and so on and so forth cdpr made cyberpunk 2077 seemed like it was the second coming of christ in turn fans investors and journalists and you know youtubers such as myself bought into the narrative cdpr was selling we eagerly awaited for years any bit of news on cdpr's venture into the dark future a franchise that was finally making the jump to video games as it had existed for years as a tabletop rpg created of course by mike pondsmith so as 2013 2014 2015 2016 and 2017 passed excitement was through the roof and then cdpr dropped a nearly hour-long gameplay preview which made clear to everyone this was the real deal and it was safe to indeed be excited that excitement in cdpr's boisterous ironclad reputation seemed to eliminate any criticism that would follow whether that be the insane amount of official cyberpunk merchandise or questions about console performance or gameplay mechanics being cut or the game being delayed multiple times or cdpr developers being overworked despite assurances by management that they would not regardless the red flags were there but individuals such as myself really believed this company was different there was no way in hell that after the years of aaa disasters they would let something like that happen with arguably the most highly anticipated game of all time even looking at cdpr's history they reportedly delayed the witcher 3 because of the backlash that ubisoft faced for assassin's creed unity's buggy launch surely there's no way cdpr would forget the lessons that they learned years prior there is absolutely no chance that they could possibly do the same thing that they very publicly shamed other companies for doing then came december 10th 2020. the launch of cyberpunk 2077 the rest is really history the game out of the gate did amazing largely due to misleading marketing and false promises that people such as myself promoted unfortunately cdpr broke the trust of everyone the tagline of its coming when it's ready really just meant it's coming when management feels they need a payday the story of cyberpunk 2077 is one that is not finished but since launched nine months ago everything that could go wrong went wrong the immediate post-launch plans that cd projekt red had discussed and envisioned went up in flames the focus quickly turned to attempting to fix cyberpunk as the game barely ran on last gen consoles still in present day the game doesn't run great it runs better but it's come at a cost especially in playstation 4 with the open world becoming a near ghost town with update 1.2 which in turn improved performance by a bit enough though for sony to give cdpr the green light to have the game added back to the playstation store it's quite clear this game should not have been released in the playstation 4 and xbox one consoles at least in december 2020 considering the amount of issues and because of those issues and cdpr's ceo's misleading remarks about console performance prior to launch it costs the company big time cdpr announced refunds for players dissatisfied with the state of the game just days after launch following that move sony made one as well they pulled the game from the playstation store other platforms would allow for refunds and add a warning label to cyberpunk 2077 store page it would later be reported that refunds cost cdp are just over 50 million dollars the early positive pc review scores did not translate to other platforms and many other reviewers experiences there was a drastic performance difference between console and pc with many reviewers and gaming sites accusing cdpr of intentionally trying to hide console performance before launch day even putting performance and bugs to the side for a moment many were critical of the game's quality a big feature life paths ended up being kind of pointless outside of a 15 minute intro quest the open world featured many issues such as brain dead ai and not enough things to do for as beautiful as night city is it severely lacks interactivity you can't customize your character's appearance you can't customize your vehicle you can't change your apartment you can't really go on a killing rampage without dealing with a broken police system you can't enjoy a fun non-scripted car chase you can however take on an armed gang on every other corner and assist the cops quite often which does seem to be the opposite of punk but whatever because of all of this it shouldn't be surprising to hear that the record-breaking one million plus players at launch quickly moved on and currently cyberpunk 2077 averages about 9 000 concurrent players on steam the witcher 3 for comparison's sake averages about triple that the grand return to the playstation store finally happened two months ago maybe it was three and while there was an immediate boost in players being named the best-selling game on the playstation store in june since then that too has flatlined multiple studios and industry figures have called out cdpr for how they went about cyberpunk's launch even inside of cd projekt red we've seen major issues whether that be the company being hacked and their files released to the public their stock dropping by over 50 percent executives calling out reports that shined a negative light on them in the game's development multiple lead developers moving on from the company cyberpunk 2077 having to get a new post-launch game director as the current one needed to be moved on to the next witcher game following the departure of the director that was originally supposed to lead the game's development shareholders launching a mega lawsuit against the company for lying about the state of the game before launch cyberpunk 2077's roadmap has been delayed multiple times and as it stands the developer has been pretty quiet throughout this year likely taking a note from no man's sky and how that developer navigated a disastrous launch in 2021 cdpr has delivered a number of underwhelming patches and have left fans waiting and waiting and waiting finally just a few weeks ago and eight months after launch the game received its most substantial patch to date alongside that came the first batch of free dlc unfortunately though many in the cyberpunk community were disappointed to find out the newest patch did not bring many quality of life fixes and the free dlc was very very minor for many not a good enough reason to reinstall the game some fans were even irate about the newest update feeling cdpr should be doing much more to say that they are sorry for everything that's happened as it currently stands the entire 17 pieces of free dlc have leaked and it looks like much of the content to come will be indeed minor just like as it was with the witcher 3 wild hunt in the coming weeks and months players should be getting new weapons poses gigs animations a new game plus mode and potentially some in-game customization options other than that a free next-gen update is supposed to release before the year ends although cdpr's recent remarks do not inspire confidence in that happening regardless if there are concerns of cdpr abandoning the next gen update or future paid content those concerns can be laid to rest as it appears about 40 of the company is still working on fixing the game and developing the free next-gen update with future paid content likely coming sometime next year there should be at least two single-player paid expansions released with just recently cdpr revealing in an investor call that they right now have 160 developers working on the first expansion cdpr is investing quite a bit of money and resources into the future of cyberpunk 2077 not just with improving but expanding upon the experience thanks to the work of data miners it appears the company is looking beyond just expansions in a next-gen update as the original vision of cyberpunk online may be being revived this is something cdpr has been talking about for years but earlier on in 2021 it appeared the multiplayer plans were dead although that doesn't appear to be the case anymore as recent in-game files indicate some sort of multiplayer component is likely in the pipeline judging by the original vision that was leaked it's very likely cdpr's own version of attempting to make a cyberpunk multiplayer that mirrors that of grand theft auto online could be coming true either next year or in 2023 still there's a lot of uncertainty with what's to come and how we even got here cdpr's communication has been mostly non-existent since launch although the company has promised to do better even so whenever the company does post or say anything there's tons of vitriol among the cyberpunk community no one could have expected or even anticipated cyberpunk 2077 becoming one of the most divisive games in recent history look no further than one of cyberpunk 2077's recent social media posts about life pass to see just how toxic and angry things have gotten or head over to the game subreddit in which every other post is either someone trashing the game someone mocking an aspect of the game or someone sharing cosplayer a new mod cyberpunk 2077 is in a very awkward place right now because many are convinced cdpr needs to over deliver and that's just not happening and probably won't happen the company has made improvements to the game it's certainly not as buggy or doesn't crash as much but that's not really what many wish to see improved they want all the flaws of the game to be addressed whether that be the police ai car chases in-game customization being able to sit down at a food vendor's table smarter vehicle ai and the list goes on and on the story of this game is one that should be remembered but won't and i'm not talking about the actual narrative of v and johnny i'm speaking to the development of this game and how management basically said [ __ ] it let's just launch it cdpr's team is working as fast as they can but they are far behind because of the current world situation but also because this game needed a lot of work and as one cdpr developer indicated recently fixing one minor aspect of the game like the minimap may seem simple but the reality is that one fix could break the entire game especially on last gen versions cyberpunk 2077 really did need a delay it really did need to launch probably in 2022 according to one cdpr developer based on reporting from bloomberg's jason schreier that came about in january of this year that's exactly what the cdpr developer expected to be the case based on the progress that they were making in 2019 but again that did not happen and now we're in this very delicate of a situation in which confidence in cdpr has been flushed down the toilet instead of reports such as jason schreier's have shined the light on the game's messy development even drawing a response from cdpr studio head adam badowski schreier's january 16 2021 expose revealed a lot more unflattering details about how cyberpunk 2077 was made that included the revelation the big grand e3 2018 gameplay demo was almost entirely fake developing the game engine alongside the game slowed production whenever developers questioned the many challenges they expected with an ambitious game like this the executives simply responded with we'll figure it out along the way that response almost mirroring bioware magic a belief that bioware lead developers had that if they work hard enough the project would come together eventually until it didn't and didn't again many top witcher 3 developers clashed with game director and studio head adam badowski over the vision of cyberpunk leading to many of them departing from the studio cdpr staff knew cyberpunk 2077 was not going to be ready for launch in early 2020 we're making bets sharing memes about the inevitable delays with getting this game out the door by the end of 2020 sacrifices had to be made with the size of night city scaled down and multiple features cancelled for as ambitious as cyberpunk 2077 was supposed to be it was understaffed compared to other studios making projects of this scope like rockstar games which had thousands of developers employed and all their studios working on red dead redemption 2. to make matters worse cdpr did double in staff size from the witcher 3 to cyberpunk 2077 but this sudden growth led to teams being unorganized in regards to the state of the game especially on last gen consoles engineers were warning the executives and the concerns were dismissed even in the days and weeks before launch cdpr knew how bad the game was performing on those consoles but the marketing machine went on and the hype went through the roof up until launch day jason schreier's report gave us a great idea of what went wrong with cyberpunk 2077 but a few months later polish website spiders webb fleshed out further what happened with one of the most highly anticipated games of all time they also provided further reason for why i am concerned about the future of this company and the inevitable future witcher game a special thank you to reddit user checking is my priority for translating the piece spider's web revealed citing their own sources that by the end of 2019 just one percent of presented vertical slice met requirements this internal demo's purpose was to show the structure and mechanics of the game one qa department employee told spyder's web this is the first time this has ever happened cdpr apparently knew that review copies would not be generous with silent pc reviews done months before launch silent reviews are evaluations made by companies of the current state of a game they hire reviewers have them sign ndas and they review the game as it is giving feedback and an idea on how the public or games media will react to it the reviewers expected a mostly negative reception anticipating a 6 out of 10 average score had the game released in september 2020. most notable is the fact that this was just pc anyway the reviewers recommended a delay it was expected if the game were to be delayed about two to three months and the most serious issues were ironed out the game's average score on pc would jump to about an 85 out of 100. reviewers also said if the game was delayed further to april 2021 the review score could be above 90 if the most important bugs were squashed new mechanics were added and certain existing ones were reworked again this was just a pc evaluation which is quite telling cdpr developers blame management for not tightening the scope of the game with executives wanting more and more added which contributed to delays outsourcing companies described the early 2020 build of cyberpunk 2077 as one of the worst that they have ever received in line with jason schreier's reporting spiders webb additionally claims building the game in red engine 4 at the same time proved to be a disaster designers would have to wait on the engine to test features and ideas they had so finally after waiting when once the engine was where it needed to be bugs and glitches would appear which meant fixes were needed and again designers would have to wait this was a constant cycle which led to a slowed production interestingly some cdpr staff claimed the mismanagement of gwent hurt cyberpunk 2077 because cdpr was investing tons of resources and time into making this card game work on console and no i'm not referring to the witcher 3's mini game gwent but the standalone card game in the end gwent on console ended up being a major dud for the company and just took many developers away from what they could have been doing on cyberpunk cdpr devs were called outside talent not lasting long at the company with a ubisoft manager coming in to help with the witcher 3 and breaking down banging his head on the table due to the stress and difficulties that he faced in the project cdpr's work culture and environment has been constantly criticized by journalists and former employees for years spiders web goes on to add that several employees were waiting until they received their cyberpunk bonuses before leaving as they were reportedly fed up with the company and ready to move in a new direction the last couple of years cdpr has lost a number of high-profile talent including key witcher 3 engine programmers and game directors all of the following names contributed to the witcher 3 in big ways with some assisting the development of cyberpunk 2077. four out of the five top names in the witcher 3's credits are no longer at cd project red with cdpr krakow studio head and witcher 3 executive producer john mamaeus leaving the company in march conrad tomaszkiewicz who is the game director in the witcher 3 and its expansion served as the vice president of game development at cdpr and was supposed to lead development on the witcher 4 left the company in may following an internal investigation into accusations of bullying matush thomas kevich who is the lead quest designer in the witcher 3 also announced in may that he was leaving the company peter krzvonik ziek who is the lead producer in the witcher 3 as well as the executive producer on the entire franchise left the company in april 2020 to join polish developer techland jamie bury the lead animator on the witcher 3 also left the company to join techland since cyberpunk 2077's launch a number of lead developers on that game have also left the company including a few programmers such as one that was supposedly in charge of the game's ai there has been a lot of discussion about how many witcher 3 developers actually are still at cd projekt red for my research it seems less than half are looking into the game's credits about 169 names out of 320 listed or no longer at the studio with certain departments being more depleted than others for example cdpr has been able to retain much of their artists while losing many programmers and producers most importantly though much of the management and lead developers in the witcher 3 are still at the company minus of course some of the top people involved as i mentioned earlier looking into the witcher 3 blood and wine credits the narrative does not change much at all with about 111 of 282 listed individuals no longer at the studio some factors to consider about these numbers the tech industry has a very high turnover rate video games specifically standing at about 15 which still i would consider cdpr's numbers on the high side but it is important to note there's no way of knowing just how many credited witcher 3 developers were full-time employees versus contract employees meaning that they were only hired for a certain amount of time still cd projekt red has continued to mass hire developers that has been the strategy the last couple of years along with purchasing a few smaller studios however with sizing up the studio problems have emerged as revealed in jason schreier's reporting special thank you to reddit user caroxan for their research but they found something interesting about cyberpunk 2077's credited staff it's the fact that many departments are made up of individuals that were hired in 2018. specifically those credited with cyberpunk 2077's code is made up of entirely new people and only seven names are listed under ai code which leads myself and others to believe that cdpr just did not prioritize enough this area of this game and it shows this data is not needed to know ai is almost non-existent or barely serviceable in this game to theorize a bit this data makes me believe that somewhere around 2018 cd projekt red realized that they were falling behind in the more technical side of the game so their answer to that problem was just hiring as many programmers as they could and clearly that did not work unfortunately nine months after launch it really still isn't clear if cyberpunk 2077 is going to have a big comeback right now it doesn't look like it but never say never the company here in 2021 has made a lot of mistakes but not everything has been bad as recently cdpr hired modders to assist with cyberpunk 2077 that's just amazing i personally love when companies recognize and reward their community instead of neglecting them like certain others do so good job cdpr and a recent investor called cdpr again committed to the future of this game reiterating their goal of winning the trust of gamers back and i still believe that'll never happen as one polish developer who has worked with cdpr in the past and continues to work with them told spiders web they've seen this company struggle and be on the brink of bankruptcy multiple times each time coming out stronger than before up until now first of all the strength is not seen in their latest strategy i expected that they would show something amazing something that would make people fall in love with them again and this time everything is so saggy bland and conservative you can see that unfortunately they have no idea how to recover what they missed what drove the whole company the love of the players the sad truth is that they will never be able to recover the trust that they once had because of how badly they burned so many players i enjoyed cyberpunk 2077 quite a bit because it hit exactly what i wanted i also primarily played this game on a high-end pc my experience is not the same for many others who have had to deal with dozens of crashes an empty buggy open world and some that really wanted to role play his v but had to deal with brain dead ai and some that just didn't connect with the game's story and characters like i did we already went over what's next for cyberpunk 2077 but i do have to wonder if we'll eventually see the things that were supposed to be in the game day one throughout night city you can find traces of features and locations that were supposed to be there whether that be most of charter hill which was erased before launch but still left on the game's physical map or the casino resort which was talked up before launch and only parts of it remains in the game or the subway system which has doors and platforms left behind throughout the city or the pool tables inside of bars that ended up being nothing but in the game's debut trailer look to be some type of fun mini game or pacifica which much of the district is not accessible and appears incomplete there's also a prison yard and inside of militech which features some detail but are empty and abandoned it's still odd to me that the game's physical map has five highlighted in red locations spaceport stadium arasaka tower nuclear power plant and dam with only one of those highlighted locations arasaka tower being accessible right now which is truly [ __ ] bizarre a lot about cyberpunk 2077 still does not make sense even with all the excellent reporting investigating and data mining the next coming months will be interesting to see if the game can start to mount a comeback and that truly won't begin until we see whatever the first expansion will be how much bigger will cyberpunk 2077 get and will it be enough to bring players back from a narrative standpoint there's some exciting things cdpr can do there have been teases of rogue eye and potentially a larger mystery within night city happening will the first or second expansion take place before or after the point of no return that's another huge question i personally have i know for a fact everyone wants more pan am and judy content and i have to believe cdpr has recognized that so definitely at least for myself there's reasons to be intrigued by what's to come but up to this point not much has changed from nine months ago you could argue many are just exhausted by this game and will need to be blown away by future content return and it's unclear if that will happen looking further down the road cdpr does face increased pressure to deliver what the witcher 4. i feel a bit more confident in that game considering it's so much more familiar to cdpr but at the same time the trust is gone and i really want to be excited because i love the witcher franchise but at the same time i'll be taking a wait and see approach in conclusion 9 months later and i'm not impressed i still think the first paid expansion for this game is the make or break moment and we're still probably at least six or so months away from that anyway have you been playing cyberpunk 2077 or considering reinstalling let me know your thoughts down in the comment section below but thank you for watching make sure to leave a like if you did enjoy this video or if you found any informative value and make sure to follow my other social media accounts for updates on new videos links are always down in the description below i'm most active on twitter giving opinions on news that they do not always get into video forms so do make sure to follow me over there also check out my discord for all sorts of discussion on games and again thank you for joining consider subscribing for more videos like this and i'll see you later

Channel: LegacyKillaHD

Views: 1,427,817

Keywords: Cyberpunk 2077, Witcher 4, Cyberpunk 2077 Story, Cyberpunk 2077 Gameplay, Cyberpunk 2077 News, Cyberpunk 2077 Multiplayer, Elder Scrolls 6, Fallout 5, Red Dead Redemption 2, Cyber, CD Projekt Red, Witcher 4 News, Playstation 5, Cyberpunk 2077 PS5, PS5, CDPR, Keanu Reeves, Cyberpunk 2077 secret, Bethesda, Fallout 76, Cyberpunk 2077 music, Cyberpunk 2077 DLC, Cyberpunk 2077 Review, Cyberpunk 2077 Story DLC, Cyberpunk 2077 Free DLC, Cyberpunk 2077 1.3, Cyberpunk 2077 1.3 patch

Id: mujp-ChhUDk

Length: 23min 52sec (1432 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/jekzilfb]

Wait until they announce their new IP, people will just be hyped again. Regarding cdpr, it's true that it's changing, but I'd rather having them trying out new IP, rather than going full Bethesda on w3.

[u/DeathXD01]

I'm in work, so i can't watch the video, but if he really claims, that the majority of players are gone, does he realizes, that this is a single player game? Most of the people olay it out and that's it for them.

[u/Klausfunhauserss]

Legacykillah jumped from hypetrain to hatetrain superfast.