Cyberpunk 2077 - What Happened?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] so wake the [ __ ] up samurai we have a city to burn oh let me stop you right there johnny silverface have you stopped to think that by burning a city you might also burn the reputation of a certain company and the corpos who run it which would then force dozens if not hundreds of hard-working programmers into an unyielding dark void of crunch have you really thought about the consequences of your actions you're breathtaking [Applause] yes folks it must be time to drag that broken malfunctioning cyber horse onto our stage for another beating right well you know what let's do something slightly different instead of just taking you through the myriad of consequences that cyberpunk 2077 faced after its kind of extremely infamous release we're gonna focus on the why why one of the biggest titles of recent memory wound up being one of the most botched and controversial titles in recent memory but it's more than just that as we're gonna discuss the much larger problem that the gaming industry has been staring down the barrel of for the last decade so strap on your sword and run a final check on your implants samurai we've got a what happened to burn it's 2012 and cd project red the developer and its parent company just plain old cd project is seen as something of a games industry messiah this man is totally the son of god having earned their sterling reputation through the first two witcher games and their gog online service they went from a relatively unknown polish company most aaa publishers didn't even know existed to having something those same publishers greedily coveted the goodwill of lots of fans and a successful business model basically the antithesis of and unlike those that shall not be named cd project modeled their release schedule after modern rockstar make one massive game and ride on its success for several years therefore in 2012 most people expected the announcement of a third witcher but were caught off guard when they instead revealed they were bringing mike pondsmith's tabletop rpg world cyberpunk to digital life this was seen as something of a bold move for the company being very different when compared to the european fantasy routes they had previously established now while this announcement of cyberpunk did come in 2012 the vast majority of cdpr was putting their all into witcher 3 wild hunt which had its reveal the following year geralt's newest adventure promised an unheard of amount of story side content and a map size that can only be described as turgid and pulsating wild hunt had started development back around 2010 so it already had a lot of work done in its rear view especially since cdpr utilized much of what they had learned on witcher 2. the decision to announce cyberpunks so early would have long lasting effects the first and most important one being the game didn't actually enter full-time development for another four years wild hunt then released on pc and consoles to widespread acclaim in may of 2015 but it was by no means perfect especially in a technical sense all three versions had their fair share of bugs and issues at launch which makes sense given the game's size scope and complexity this is relevant because i want you to now picture witcher 3 but imagine it if it were far more advanced and it needed brand new wildly different assets had to come out on way more machines and on top of that had less overall development time i hope the stage is now properly set within your mind palace now with the witcher 3 success 28 million copies sold what did cd projekt red co-founder marcin owinski owe all this success to well he attributed that to three core pillars please have an oof ready for each one game quality gamer centric value proposition and finally and most oftenly of all communication with fans once wild hunt and its two girthy dlcs were finally finished cdpr then turned their attention towards cyberpunk which up to that point had had a small team drafting up art and characters and collaborating with mike pondsmith to create the broader conceptual strokes problems started arising as soon as the team realized that given the world the futuristic setting and the switch to first person meant a lot of the assets and tools used on witcher couldn't be much help brand new systems and technology would need to be developed built from the ground up just for cyberpunk so therefore the engine that powered wild hunt red engine 3 would need a full upgrade and a good chunk of time in which to do so as we've covered before a new engine or upgrading an old one while simultaneously making a brand new game is always risky waiting for systems and tools to come online leads to more delays and amounts to basically designing in the dark or building a bridge as you're crossing it [Applause] [Music] it would be the company's first time tackling fully customizable characters first person combat and mobility vehicles character classes and to get all of this done they were going to need to staff up in addition once the studio looked at the scope and features that the concept team had planned and were prototyping they decided almost everything needed to be scrapped this was because cd projekt higher ups wanted the game to release on then current consoles the xbox one and ps4 before microsoft and sony released their next-gen machines which they were told would hit the market in 2020. this gave the team slightly less than four years to get her done compared to wild hunts five despite cyberpunk being the far more technically challenging project and being designed for even more consoles around this time is also when adam badawski cdpr studio head decided to take control of the project and wanted a series of massive gameplay and design overhauls across the board problem here was that the employees that had been with the project since its inception disagreed with his demands with many of them citing growing frustration with his direction this then reportedly led to several high-level walkouts and those that didn't quit were getting increasingly nervous about the state of the game already many on the team felt given cyberpunk's complexity and all the hardware was going to be available on that 2022 was a realistic date given their slow progress that slowed progress was slowed down even further due to the insistence of those same bosses to constantly be impressing publications a vertical slice was shown at e3 2018 whose main purpose was just to wow the outside world and stoke the flames of hype despite them not really needing to do this as the game was always going to sell itself the problem with an elaborate behind closed doors demo and this is something other studios have had issue with is that to program and test a polished slice of gameplay that highlights multiple features and have senior staff travel halfway around the world to show off is time better spent just buckling the [ __ ] down on the main developmental pipeline you can't just grab any random bit of a level and off you go it's a much more involved process than that and really it only took resources away from a game that needed every hand on deck this of course is all made far far worse however with the revelation that the demo wasn't real it showed off systems gameplay and graphical polish that the final game was always going to lack as it was made to simply wow the press and nothing more it was definitely leaning towards being a potential target of what the team hoped to achieve rather than what was actually achievable if you are one of those unfortunate enough to remember colonial marines then this was eerily similar to dr greasy's magic demo which also happened to be another behind closed doors presentation oh and if i didn't mention this already this was a decision made by the higher ups many on the dev team felt that this demo was a waste of time in a situation where there was no time so it's around this year 2018 that the marketing machine behind cyberpunk started to eclipse cyberpunk itself which is sadly ironic given its source material for the company in general selling the game to the highest number of people took priority over solving this problem or squashing this bug or getting smooth performance out of old tech when concerns are raised over the game's quality and the slow progress made on the old consoles the attitude from team leads and their bosses was always something like oh it'll all come together in the end that's how we pulled off the witcher games right so by that logic everything's going to be just no they weren't with a looming release date being understaffed while working towards that release date and a litany of technical hurdles yet to overcome a certain character enters night city one that a lot of game developers know pretty well but now they've taken on a brand new form a slicker cooler more cyber crunch crunch culture has been criticized for the last number of years with many big pubs and devs having already seen blowback for mandating it so of course there were concerns that cd projekt red was going that same route given that the marketing was constantly fluffing up the game's size and content in night city you can become anyone every decision you make will have consequences the most believable city in any open world game to date no matter how you slice it though it's always a bad look on the company as it often comes down to poor planning and scheduling on the parts of the decision makers especially when there's data that shows crunching more often than not hinders a project rather than helps it with that in mind cd projekt red was quick to condemn the practice and stated there would be zero or minimal crunch before they immediately pressured many employees to crunch it all comes down to the fact that for bosses it's just a simple matter of math if you throw enough people at a problem and they're all putting in extra hours the job will get done on time yeah well when someone is on their 14th straight hour of looking at a screen then they are likely to make more mistakes and have to redo the work they just did it also quickly leads to burnout both mentally and physically and while it's not exactly known how much and how long this crunch period lasted many unnamed employees have reported that they were pressured by their bosses to put in extra hours this was then all compounded by the fact that at e3 2019 when cd projekt announced an initial april 2020 launch several staff members thought it was some type of sick joke given their progress there was no way they'd be able to make that date and keep up the level of quality that their fans expected now let's reiterate this company's last game sold 28 million copies and they make regular revenue via gog so they were not by any stretch of the imagination struggling to keep the lights on they could have just pushed the game back another year but the plan was to always put out xbox one and ps4 versions while those machines were so viable and then to essentially double dip with the ps5 and xbox series x this was the plan that the cd projekt upper management had carved into stone and what they sold their investors on putting the game out on as many formats as technically possible all told there would be something like nine different versions the pc the xbox one the xbox one x the xbox one running on the series x the ps4 the ps4 pro and all of these skews and configurations meant that they would need their own round of testing and submission periods this was by far the most work cd projekt had ever done on one singular game and of course by this time it became clear to a lot of engineers and programmers that the base xbox one and ps4 weren't up for what was being asked of them the complexity and density of night city was obviously designed with high-end pcs in mind so when it was suggested to simply cancel the last gen versions and delay the whole game by like another year the answer was simply no taking advantage of smart delivery and free upgrades was too enticing to pass up so upper management was unmovable with their 2020 mandate so with a year left to go the hype train was going into overdrive as it crashed into e3 2019 as it was going to be the game's last big showing they needed to impress and who better than ted neodore johnny wick constantine utah logan to hawk cyberpunk on stage it was really the flex that pushed the game over the top in a lot of people's eyes if cyberpunk 2077 wasn't a name on everyone's radars before it certainly was after given this it shouldn't shock your software to know that the game's marketing budget dwarfed what it actually cost to design and program 121 million to 209 million making for a grand total of 330. this also makes it the second most expensive game of all time and as i know you're curious the first is red dead redemption 2 and it's magical shrinking horse testicles cyberpunk was pretty much everywhere by that point being positioned as this massive leap forward the next gen title that made you scream at your mom cyberpunk 2077. wherever you looked it was punk this cyber that everyone was trying to cash in on the fad and you'd see the same neon drenched anarchist aesthetic everywhere and frankly it was getting overexposed to the point that you can now own a cyberpunk infused flophouse 2069 poster exclusive to pixelempire.com matt mcmuscles there's also a selection of what happened shirts mugs masks and etc hit the link in the description and order now you absolute cyber samurai legend anyway by the end of 2019 even the higher ups couldn't deny that the game was dog rough and simply wouldn't make its april release date in any presentable fashion so aspiring street kids nomads and corpos were told it was going to take a fair bit longer from april to september for them to be able to enter night city now for a big aaa game of this type one big delay or two is pretty common but then a specific type of bug that cdpr could never have foreseen raised its very ugly head [Music] long story short the industry was turned upside down on its head as a result big studios and publishers had to transition staff to work at home leading to a whole host of logistical problems few knew how to handle one of these issues was that due to security measures for console test kits the team were not allowed to take said hardware home something very common throughout the industry work on the pc version was then prioritized even further since most employees could access that build from home this then obfuscated just how poorly the game was running on the old gen consoles to many on the team and resulted in them lagging behind even further if that were possible it did a lot to really mask the magnitude of the problem and when management realized just how badly things were going the game slipped again by another two months this time to november as the team feverishly worked during those 60 days marketing or whoever decided it would be a great idea to publicly announce that the game was finished and that gold masters were being sent out for printing and everything was okie dokie artichoke for the november launch now you typically do need a month to allow for physical manufacturing but with crashes still crashing and all the compatibility issues with the playbox series s pro stations or whatever programmers knew this still wasn't shippable even with day one patches thus that premature announcement was taken back and an additional three weeks were allocated pushing it incredibly close down to the end of the 2020 deadline yes the game was content complete but announcing to your millions of eager and sometimes hostile fanbase that the game was done but then delaying it again well it would have been better if they just hadn't said anything at all johnny did you see what happened something feels off here you don't say so for every day of those three weeks you best believe that those programmers and qa testers went through a bunch of cruncher and while they undoubtedly fixed hundreds of horrendous issues it just wasn't enough in the end all versions of cyberpunk 2077 were plagued with numerous issues some ranging from minor to major to well really major while the pc version was the best of the skus by a badland mile it certainly wasn't flawless but it's the base console ports that were the real embarrassment and this is when all this [ __ ] just happened cd projekt red's investors filed multiple lawsuits claiming they had been lied to the game wasn't nearly as progressive or as customizable as a lot of the marketing led some people to believe sony removed the cyberpunk 2077 from its online store and offered customers refunds something that cd projekt red would need to front the bill for let me say that again sony yeah life of black tiger that's cool put on our store computer entertainment looked at cyberpunk and said nah son this is this is too [ __ ] up get this [ __ ] out of here and as of this writing it's still not available to buy digitally microsoft while not deleting the game outright nevertheless put a warning label on the game's page letting users know that yeah this shit's rough but even with all of this and even taking into account all the refunds cd projekt were quick to announce that the game still managed to shift 13 million copies in its first 10 days that's over 700 million dollars in profit and it caused the company's stock price to rise after having dipped for a little while of course this is still a phenomenal financial success by any measure and not really the issue of this story as it's more centered around perception and reputation this was the first time that cd projekt took a hit square on the jaw had their balls exposed on stream etc etc and it wasn't just in front of casual mainstream fans who might only be passingly familiar with them or cyberpunk but rather their hardcore fanbase [Applause] [Music] they then tried their best to mitigate the damage with a somber five-minute video of co-founder marcin lewinsky explaining where they went wrong and what they'd be doing to fix it while appreciated it's kind of unfortunate that the road map he detailed for all the various fixes and patches hasn't really worked out the first major one scheduled for late february was delayed due to a cyber attack that the company suffered at the hands of hackers days after iwinski's video no need to get too deep into it but here is the message left by the hackers your public image will go down the [ __ ] even more and people will see how shitty your company functions investors will lose trust in your company and the stock will dive even lower get sick having to deal with the breach probably seeking legal advice and recourse due to the hack and upping their security in general delayed the patch to blate marge supposed to go smooth no problems the dedicated ps5 and xbox series x versions also have no firm release dates other than 2021 and the game's dlc has also been pushed back to i don't know and hell man remember this thing was supposed to have multiplayer i can't imagine how far off that is so i i don't know maybe maybe my kids who don't exist will play it someday the game's entire like five to ten year schedule has been thrown off by everything and it's really unclear if people will even care about cyberpunk by the time it's actually up to spec now it is true that games like destiny final fantasy 14 and no man's sky have made big comebacks but that might not hold true here since currently cyberpunk's strictly a single player affair going back to that issue of reputation everyone is told that delays are good at least in theory it gives extra time to polish gives the devs a little more wiggle room and it'll be worth it in the end when faced with a delay marking wants gamers to view them in a more positive light oh if they're delaying it this much then it's it's gonna be amazing way better than game x or y that i was disappointed in the other year but here all the delays only made things worse in the eyes of a lot of fans and investors because it wasn't really worth it even though what they shipped into stores was a thousand times better than what they had ready in april it's the end product that counts and if this video leaves you with anything let it be that every programmer artist musician voice actor and qa tester worked their asses off every step of the way none of them wanted to ship an underwhelming buggy mess none of them wanted to disappoint you it has to come down to the mentality of upper management who are not on the floor every day and maybe missing the full picture of a given project i don't know why but i just couldn't deal with the pressure they're too busy telling investors what they want to hear and shoving their heads into the sand whenever bad news is brought to them the onus is really on them here and they knew it you'll rarely or rather never see anyone from ea or bethesda thank you owning up to problems or botched releases president adam kaczynski did we ignored 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 i and the entire leadership team are deeply sorry for this but more so than just cyberpunk itself this is a cautionary tale about where this industry is headed games simply can't continue to be made this way where ambition and scope get wildly out of control and even if technology can capture some of that imagination doesn't mean they always should human beings simply can't give the hours needed to make these things under unrealistic time frames and poor planning epic open world games like cyberpunk or the witcher are a pillar of the industry and they need to be there but companies need to be far far smarter in how they go about making them because as we've seen cd projekt a company built on quality transparency and reputation were susceptible to the same traps as any big company wanting to chase that record-setting fiscal quarter and we'll just have to see if they've learned anything from their disastrous tour of night city it's one of those places where expectations and reality collided resulting in a heap of disappointment all right it's done you can stop asking me now and i hope you enjoyed it if you know of any other massively mismanaged metropolises let me know in the comments below take a synthwave flavored cruise over to my twitter or bust into the corporate offices of the flophouse vip patreon to nominate the next episode see you next time and thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 1,396,470

Keywords: Cyberpunk 2077, Matt McMuscles, CD Projekt Red, What Happend?, Wha Happun, Video Game Documentaries, The Witcher, Flophouse, Keanu Reeves

Id: J7E_HBXCnmg

Length: 27min 23sec (1643 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 20 2021