Highlights
- CD Projekt Red spent approximately $125.9 million to fix the disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077, showing a strong commitment to improving the game.
- Updates and the successful Phantom Liberty expansion greatly improved Cyberpunk 2077, enticing lapsed players to give the game another chance.
- The critically-acclaimed Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime also contributed to repairing Cyberpunk 2077's public image, leading to an increase in players returning to the game.
It's taken an investment of around $125.9 million for CD Projekt Red to repair Cyberpunk 2077's reputation after the game's disastrous launch in 2020. There was incredible hype for Cyberpunk 2077 in the years leading up to its release, but the highly-anticipated open world game released in an underwhelming state, to say the least.
While the PC version of Cyberpunk 2077 didn't have quite as many problems, the console versions of the game were full of serious technical issues. The PS4 and Xbox One versions of Cyberpunk 2077 were so bad that the PlayStation Store pulled the game from sale and CD Projekt Red started offering refunds. A great deal of work has been done since then to repair CD Projekt Red's image and bring Cyberpunk 2077 up to fan expectations, and that work was extremely expensive.
CD Projekt Red Teases Possibility of Complete Cyberpunk 2077 Collector's Edition
Cyberpunk 2077 developer and publisher CD Projekt Red is teasing the possibility of releasing a complete edition of the game.
According to CD Projekt Red CFO Piotr Nielubowicz, it cost a combined $84.3 million to produce and market the Phantom Liberty expansion for Cyberpunk 2077. An additional $40.9 million was spent improving Cyberpunk 2077 with post-launch updates. As pointed out by IGN, this means that CD Projekt Red spent around $125.9 million fixing Cyberpunk 2077. This is quite the investment, but it seems as though CD Projekt Red's efforts have paid off.
Cyberpunk 2077 has come a long way since its 2020 launch. Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 has massively improved the game, and all the other updates that CD Projekt Red released after launch went a long way in addressing the biggest problems plaguing the open world RPG. The Phantom Liberty expansion has released to rave reviews, and it seems to be largely responsible in convincing many lapsed players to give Night City another chance.
Repairing Cyberpunk 2077's public image hasn't just happened in the video game and Phantom Liberty expansion. The critically-acclaimed Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime deserves some of the credit as well. In fact, the success of that anime is credited with an uptick of players returning to the game last year.
CD Projekt Red's commitment to fixing Cyberpunk 2077 will give the studio the chance to return to the IP with future projects. A live-action Cyberpunk project is in the works, and beyond that, a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel is also starting development. Not much is known about the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel at the time of this writing, but the developers have said that it's yet to be decided if the game will be strictly first-person like 2077 or if it will be third-person instead.
Cyberpunk 2077 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
Source: IGN
