Was the E3 demo a fake and the game only in development since 2016?
No time right now?
CD-Projekt Red does not come to rest. Now, former developers claim that the game Cyberpunk 2077 has only been in development since 2016 – not since 2012. A demo at E3 2018 is said to have been a fake.
Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier has signed up for a current post conversed with various internal and external developers who were involved in the Cyberpunk 2077 game machine. Serious allegations came on the table. Studio boss Adam Badowski is forced to react.
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Badly planned and coordinated, management overwhelmed
Cyberpunk 2077 was badly planned and badly coordinated in the process. The underlying game engine was developed at the same time as the game, so there were always delays. Despite massive overtime, the project could not be mastered. These are the allegations from the ranks of Cyberpunk 2077 developers, of whom only ex-employee Adrian Jakubiak was willing to show his face.
He and his up to 500 colleagues would have worked on Cyberpunk 2077 for around 65 hours a week. On the part of the management, all indications that Cyberpunk 2077 could not be completed in the communicated schedule had been ignored or otherwise negated.
E3 demo fake, work started too late
The most serious accusation is probably that the demo shown at the E3 2018 game fair was not a real demo at all, but a complete fake. At the time there was practically nothing presentable. Developers would have had to work explicitly on the “demo” for months so that the studio could show any presentable result for the fair.
However, that was not particularly surprising, because although Cyberpunk 2077 was officially announced in 2012, work on it only started in 2016.
I’ve read your piece and tweets, thank you for the read. I have some thoughts. https://t.co/T3qACdrnwM pic.twitter.com/wuzy5lXoqQ
– Adam Badowski⚡️ (@AdamBadowski) January 16, 2021
Studio boss Adam Badowski does not want to sit on him. He rejects the fake accusations and explains deviating representations between the demo and the final game due to the nature of the demo itself. It is “difficult for a trade fair demo not to be a test of the vision (…) of a game two years before its delivery.”
But that does not mean that it is a fake. Badowski then names various examples that are ultimately found in the game and takes these scenes as evidence that the demo was cut from the development pool.
Cyberpunk 2077 according to the studio boss not “catastrophic”
In addition, it is completely normal that games “only begin to look like the end product a few months before release.” This is due to the fact that games are not developed linearly but in individual scenes – very similar to the making of a movie.
Badowski also refuses to accept the accusation that not all features should have been included in the delivery state. In the development process it is completely normal for “features to come and go.” What does not work is overturned.
Badowski also points out that Cyberpunk 2077 “got several 9 / 10s and 10 / 10s on the PC from many well-known game magazines around the world.” to work on the problems. As a result, the case is clear for Badowski: “None of this is what I would call catastrophic.”
CD-Projekt Red wants to release an update for Cyberpunk 2077 in a few days. Patches are always planned for the coming months. This means that CD-Projekt should clearly fall behind with its other projects.
A catastrophe looks different
Indeed, given the sales figures, it doesn’t seem justified to speak of a disastrous start to the game. Within the first two weeks of sales, around 13 million copies of Cyberpunk 2077 were sold at an average price of 60 euros, which should correspond to sales of around 800 million euros.
Refunds should already be included in this invoice. CD-Projekt Red had already declared that it had recovered the costs for development and marketing.
On the other hand, the company has to grapple with lawsuits from its shareholders. They claimed that they had not been truthfully informed about problems with the development of Cyberpunk 2077. The share price then fell sharply.
