As CD Projekt Red continues to reel from the notoriously troubled launch of Cyberpunk 2077, studio head Adam Badowski has disputed a report claiming that the gameplay demo shown at E3 2018 was fake.
A recent article from Bloomberg chronicles what it calls Cyberpunk 2077's "disastrous rollout," which let to a 30% drop in the studio's shares. The piece discusses the various issues that have plagued the game, most notably the glitches, bugs and performance issues -- which are particularly bad on last-generation hardware.
These issues led Sony to not only offer full refunds on Cyberpunk 2077 in an unprecedented move, but also remove the game from the PlayStation Store entirely until further notice. Similarly, Microsoft expanded its refund policy to better accommodate those dissatisfied with the game. While Cyberpunk 2077 is still available on Xbox's digital store, it comes with a label warning potential buyers that performance issues may persist until the game is patched.
Bloomberg's piece also claims, among other things, that the Cyberpunk 2077 demo CD Projekt Red debuted at E3 2018 was "almost entirely fake." "CD Projekt hadn't yet finalized and coded the underlying gameplay systems, which is why so many features, such as car ambushes, were missing from the final product," the article reads. "Developers said they felt like the demo was a waste of months that should have gone toward making the game."
In response, Badowski issued a lengthy statement on Twitter. "It's hard for a trade show game demo not to be a test of vision or vertical slice two years before the game ships, but that doesn't mean it's fake," he wrote. "Compare the demo with the game. Look at the Dumdum scene or the car chase, or the many other things. What the people reading your article may not know is that games are not made in a linear fashion and start looking like the final product only a few months before launch. If you look at that demo now, it's different yes, but that's what the 'work in progress' watermark is for. Our final game looks and plays way better than what that demo ever was."
He continued, "As for 'missing' features, that's part of the creation process. Features come and go as we see if they work or not. Also, car ambushes exist in the final game also verbatim to what we showed in the demo. And if we get a bit more granular about our release, the vision we presented in this demo evolved into something that got multiple 9/10s and 10/10s on PC from many renown gaming outlets in the world. As for old-gen consoles, yes that is another case, but we've owned up to that and are working super hard to eliminate bugs (on PC, too -- we know that's not a perfect version either) and we are proud of Cyberpunk 2077 as a game and artistic vision. This all is not what I'd call disastrous."
CD Projekt Red previously revealed a road map for its plan to improve the Cyberpunk 2077, with patches slated to arrive soon and free DLC and a free next-gen console update set to arrive sometime this year. The road map also promises "multiple updates and improvements" to be made throughout 2021. That being said, it still remains unclear when the game will return to the PlayStation Store, despite CD Projekt Red saying it is working to get the game back on the platform "as soon as possible."
Source: Twitter\@AdamBadowski
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