According to a new report from theBloomberg, executives at CD Projekt took responsibility for the buggy release of Cyberpunk 2077 and told staff that they will receive their full bonuses no matter how the game is reviewed. Previously, the developers were told they would receive extra pay based on the game’s aggregated critical performance represented by Metacritic.
Adam Badowski, studio head and creative director, wrote the following in an email obtained by Bloomerg to the staff: “We initially had a bonus system that was focused on the game’s ratings and the release date, but after consideration, we believe that measure is simply not fair under the circumstances. We underestimated the lengths and complexity involved to make this a reality, and still you did everything you could to deliver an ambitious, special game.”
While the title currently sits at a 90 out of 100 on Metacritic (which still disappointed shareholders), if it dips below that threshold the game would most likely not meet the original criteria for the bonus pay.
Alongside the bugs that plagued its launch, Liana Ruppert from GameInformer suffered a major seizurewhile playing the game. This was due to light patterns similar to those used by neurologists to help induce seizures in patients. It was also later noted that the game didn’t have a clear epilepsy warning at the start of gameplay, something which has now been remedied.
This same RPG has seen its share of other controversies withreportsoftransphobia, andcrunch culture, as well as the studio also refusing to share information about the game’s accessibility. Read up on why we think CD Projekt Redshould have confirmedCyberpunk 2077’s accessibility options sooner.
November 19th was the original date thatCyberpunk 2077should have been releasing. But unfortunately,after going gold, the massively anticipated RPG waspushed back a couple of weeks to December 10thdue to developers CD Projekt Red having to finalize as many as nine different versions of the game,specifically fixing optimization issueson current-gen versions.
CD Projekt Redput out a reportthat states that the studio has already seen a return on its investmenton its first day. The report states that the royalties receivable by the company in associationwith pre-order salesacross all distribution channels have exceeded both the total development costs related to the game as well as the marketing and promotional costs that have already incurred or anticipated for the rest of 2020.
Cyberpunk 2077is currently available for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia. The game is also playable on theXbox Series X|SandPS5thanks to backward compatibility.
