The Witcher 4 developer CD Projekt Red believes it’s yet to complete its “full redemption arc” after the disastrous 2020 launch of its open-world action-adventure game, Cyberpunk 2077.
The open-world action-adventure game had a release so disastrous, CD Projekt investors considered suing the studio for “materially misleading information”, and Sony refunded Cyberpunk 2077 players unhappy with the game’s performance on PS4 even beyond the typical two-hour playtime limit before pulling the game from sale completely shortly after it launched.
Now, speaking to Edge’s Knowledge newsletter, joint CEO Michał Nowakowski admitted it had been a “heartbreaking” time for the studio, given its reputation had been its “biggest asset”.
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“I’m not 100 percent convinced we went through the full redemption arc,” Nowakowski acknowledged. “I’m convinced that we lost the faith of some people indefinitely, and that’s a fair thing. But I do hope we will be able to make it back – if not with The Witcher 4, then with whatever comes next.
“We were left with seasoned, battle-hardened veterans; leaders who were able to carry a different kind of challenge on their shoulders,” he added. “Our dream is to be making more games, although we never want to turn into the studio that’s going to be launching a big game every year.”
Nowakowski’s comments continued: “It may happen, but this is not the goal. We have a rough ten-year rolling plan, but the goal is not to flood the games market with CDPR games. We just want to make really cool games, and we don’t want to have a ton of IPs, either. We’re not planning to grow in that way.”
Since then, the team has worked to turn the game around so much that a month after the release of its DLC Phantom Liberty, 95 per cent of the 7000+ reviews left were positive, something associate game director Paweł Sasko said he “always believed” but “never thought [he] would actually see it”.
