Cyberpunk 2077: CD Projekt Red Responds to Report About Fake E3 Demo and Development Issues

CD Projekt Red studio head Adam Badowski has responded to a Bloomberg report about Cyberpunk 2077 and its alleged fake E3 demo and development issues.

[Knightofelemia]

"Our final game looks and plays way better than what that demo ever was." I don't believe that most people know trailers whether movie trailers or game trailers are smoke and mirrors and they only show off the good stuff to help build up hype. And game demos only show off so much of the game they probably took parts that weren't as buggy and made a game demo out of Cyberpunk. The game can be a pile of shit but yet still have a trailer to make it look bad ass. You marketed this game as a must have title even have Keanu Reeves in it and advertising it in the commercials yet the game falls flat. I still wonder what Keanu Reeves thinks about this game he was lead to believe was a bad ass game just to have it go from a dumpster fire to a sinking ship.

"Badowski then responded to the claim that many Cyberpunk 2077 developers knew the game would not be ready for release in 2020." Should have listened to your team even if they were canned or have left. You wouldn't have gone from a dumpster fire to a sinking ship that you have to patch as you go. You pushed the game out early to capitalize on the holiday season sales and well two lawsuits and Sony pulling the title digitally from the PSN store is what happens when you rush an unfinished product. You knew the game was broken your staff told you now it has come back to bite you in the ass which it has.

"How he claims that the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S next-gen update will arrive in the "second half" of 2021." I highly doubt people are going to keep the game around that long just to count how many patches it will take to save the sinking ship. There are more exciting titles coming out in 2021 like RE8, Horizon 2 to name a few. Cyberpunk will most likely be a highly traded in game to the point where Gamestop refuses to accept the title as a trade in. I know I am trading in Cyberpunk I am tired of waiting on patches for the XB1 port I just want this game gone and off my shelf. Your last update made the game worse I am tired of my Xbox looking like it's confused whether it wants to continue playing the game or crash.

[potatoseal]

"and well two lawsuits"

Apparently, there are now like 15 lawsuits going on.
https://exputer.com/cd-proj...

This really is unprecedented. How far CDPR have fallen.

[Knightofelemia]

Just need a lawsuit from Keanu Reeves now would not be surprised if that jumps out of the bush next.

[InUrFoxHole]

That should've been activision. Guess gamers have had enough lol

[-Foxtrot]

It's funny because they expect us to believe them when they lied to us during Cyberpunks entire development

I mean who am I going to believe them or Jason?

Don't get me wrong, Jason isn't a perfect guy, and will be wrong from time to time, but unlike most he does his research into this sort of thing and what Jason reported sounded like things most of us were feeling leading up to the games development and even after once the game released.

EDIT

Jason's Reply on Twitter

https://twitter.com/jasonsc...

"Adam, I appreciate the responses. As I'm sure you're aware, the team declined to respond to my specific questions or provide an interview before my article went live. But if you'd like to give your perspective on the topics you didn't cover here, I'd be happy to chat any time"

[anast]

Mr. Bloomberg has to stay relevant so I wouldn't trust him more than anyone else. Research can be tinted in a self serving way.

[LucasRuinedChildhood]

A very weak response to Jason's piece. The things you don't say, say an awful lot.

He chose to completely ignore crunch and the claim that the release was much sooner than expected which says all you need to know. If it wasn't true, he would have simply stated that it wasn't true.

"Also, car ambushes exist in the final game almost verbatim to what we showed in the demo." A van cannot dynamically pull up on you in the world and weave between traffic (the traffic can't even drive around an obstacle). It was a lie as presented in the demo. End of.

Also pretending that the PC version is 100% realized and just has some bugs is just professional damage control. The police spawn right beside you. It's not finished.

He recently claimed that they didn't notice issues with the console versions while also pointing out that texture streaming issues constantly affected the game's development. His lies don't even make sense.

[Vegamyster]

"Also pretending that the PC version is 100% realized and just has some bugs is just professional damage control."

He directly says the PC version isn't perfect and they never actually showed how the police system worked in the demos and only vaguely talked about it, here is a quote from them before the game came out about "Emergent Gang Battles." which would explain why the Police system isn't great.

“To be honest, most of our content is hand-crafted. It’s mostly tailored,” quest director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz told TG in our exclusive interview. “We don’t really go into systemic, generated solutions that would generate some random conflicts across the city. Most of the stuff you see as you travel through Night City - like in The Witcher 3 - is hand-crafted and custom-made by us.”

https://www.thegamer.com/cy...

They probably avoided talking about it for that very reason, it's just something they threw in so its not that isn't not finished, it just isn't good.

[LucasRuinedChildhood]

That's actually not true. They did talk about the wanted system in 2019, and how unlike GTA, they police could take bribes. Corporations could even bribe the police - that's how interactive they said it was. There's more on top of this as well:
https://gamerant.com/cyberp...

The end result is not what the developers intended or wanted because the game was rushed out the door by management. At this stage, the official release date had just been revealed as April 2020 (it still wasn't fully implemented in December 2020), so the developers probably did think that this release date was crazy.

He is highly responsible for the game being prematurely released and rather than being honest (this was just a financial decision), he is pretending that the issues sincerely just weren't seen in QA. He is lying. I know you don't believe that.

[LucasRuinedChildhood]

Note:
When I said "I know you don't believe that", I meant that I know you don't believe the obvious lies (that they just didn't see issues in QA). Don't that is clear from the way I finished my comment.

[Vegamyster]

That's literately two sentences and it comes across more as a lore dump rather than an actual wanted system that the player would be interacting with.

"the police force is "up for hire" and that "laws exist to take bribes from corporations." The corporation could bribe the government to pass a law and then used the corrupt police force to send the law after players. Night City is "a city of people trying to constantly get one up on each other" and it's "not a place where you want to trust the government," explained Liu."

"He is lying. I know you don't believe that."

Maybe you shouldn't assume things because that's not an argument, i don't believe for a second they were unaware of the state of the game on consoles and stated on this site within the first couple days of the games release that the last gen versions should have been cancelled or delayed.

[LucasRuinedChildhood]

@Vegamyster

It was described as a gameplay system, not as a piece of lore. "send the law after players" is a gameplay system.

"Maybe you shouldn't assume things because that's not an argument." You then go on to agree with me that you know that he is lying about the QA. C'mon, man. I clarified exactly what I meant in a second reply to make sure there was no confusion.

[Vegamyster]

LucasRuinedChildhood

If two sentences is all you get after 4 years of full development and another 4 years of preproduction/setting up then maybe there isn't much there, that's what i was getting at. Now had they'd gone in depth like how combat and dialogue options work then i would agree.

"You then go on to agree with me that you know that he is lying about the QA. C'mon, man"

People can tell the truth, part of the truth or lie depending on the circumstances all at the same time. It's not shock they'll lie or downplay the console version because of the lawsuits going on, they're not going to willingly agree those versions had massive technical issues they knew about with that going on.

[PrinceAli]

@Vegamyster

You have genuinely done nothing but bootlick CDPR this entire time and look stupid doing it! this has to be some of the stupidest damage control i've ever seen, they f**ked up, lied and this damage control from them will only get by because of people like you who defend their BS ¬__¬

[Vegamyster]

PrinceAli

So saying a games systems are not great, they definitely know how bad the last gen versions were and they should have delayed or cancelled the last gen version while not diving into things we didn't really know anything about is boot licking? Care to elaborate or would you prefer to stick to name calling?

[Sciurus_vulgaris]

While I’m enjoying Cyperpunk 2077 on my series X. I can’t help but feel the game could have been so much more if patients wasn’t overtaken by greed. It’s too bad the higher ups at CDPR got so overconfident due to the success Witcher, whilst also being oblivious to the concerns of their staff.

[InUrFoxHole]

I tried to play it on the series x, before the patches. I had floating people, horrible textures, life less city, pop ins. What made me say screw this game was when I was talking to the 1st NPC while he was eating Chinese food. During that cut scene there was a spawn point for NPCs over his left shoulder. Every couple of seconds 1 would spawn and walk straight with a lifeless look on their face. I couldn't focus on what the guy was saying. Huge let down. Worse than Halo. Atleast they were smart enough to delay it.

[annoyedgamer]

The only reason there are accusations of a fake demo is because it was held behind closed doors for the elites while the rest of us peasants were prohibited from seeing it. You made your bed now lie in it.

[InUrFoxHole]

Like that you know you're a peasant.... hmmm

[Rachel_Alucard]

So they decline to comment first, only to come back to pick and choose what to answer to appear in the right?

He's also twisting words with the car ambushes line. Sure there are car ambushes in the game like the demo as he claims, but they are scripted sequences that happen only on certain missions, they are not dynamic events or anything. There is no cop chases or any of those things outside of scripted setpieces. So while he is right, he is not right on what people are talking about.

I'm also disgusted by the fact he would use high ratings from publications with low standards, agenda, and conflict of interests as a defense against everything wrong with the game.

[anast]

You are right there no cop car chases outside script. However, there are dynamic events but the mainly consist of rival shootouts and cop vs gang shootouts and robberies. And there are car ambushes in Maelstrom territory and they are not scripted, but they trigger at odd times, because of bugs, so the element of surprise is gone. The side missions go beyond any open world game I have played, save, RDR2. Of course you would know this if you have played the game.

[CantThinkOfAUsername]

The cops can actually chase V outside of any scripted missions in the Maelstorm territory. It appears like a bug, mind you, but it can happen. In some Cop vs. Gang shootouts, gang members can spawn in a car to help their buddies, sometimes the police will get in their car and start shooting them. If you shoot the cop car, they'll chase V instead, albeit for a short amount of time. If V speeds a little the cops lose interest (or maybe they despawn and respawn) and just drive like nothing happened. So Adam Badowski is full of bullshit. As usual. The system is there, the devs just didn't have enough time to implement it. Just like the train and metro stations and traversal system. Just like the random instances of someone falling from the roof of a building or getting in a car and it explodes, which were supposed to be random world events/crimes that V can investigate furthur. Just like life paths that were supposed to alter your quests and dialogue, and have consequences on V and the world instead of 15 minutes worth of quests and a long cutscene then the exact same story progression. The list goes on.

[Rachel_Alucard]

I also reread the line he mentioned that Scherier claim of him talking to 20 employees and saying that "Most of the staff knew the game wouldn't be ready in time." Either Adam can't read English well, he's dumb, or he purposely misconstrued the point on purpose to look in the right. Scherier never said the 20 people represented most of the staff, he was saying the 20 people said "most of the staff." But Adam twisted it to look bad.

The only 2 things I agree with Adam on is the language thing, being that the company can't physically stop people from speaking their own language amongst themselves in private. It goes beyond Polish since the company has Europeans from all over and they can't expect everyone to just stop using their native toungue over fears of shit talking. That's gonna happen regardless of the language.

The other thing is the pay scale in Poland is way lower compared to the states, but Scherier converted the amount to USD and never offered a baseline for the economic differences in Poland.

[anast]

@Can't Cops will chase and lose interest outside of any scripted mission in any territory not just Maelstrom. There are still "car" ambushes outside of script, but not like they showed. I have around 100 + hours in the game. Gang shoot outs are there, how it plays out is the same though. You went on some personal diatribe there, were you a pre-order victim?

[anast]

@Alucard Have you played the game though? Because it's hard talking about such details without actually playing it. Of course, every one is free to parrot information and someone can come to any general conclusion they like without playing the game.

[Rachel_Alucard]

https://puu.sh/H82Qf/02afc4...

What now? Are you gonna claim I didn't play long enough next?

Regardless, the ambushes are near nonexistent, and after looking into it more, I've confirmed the few quests the ambushes do happen in are just triggered by a script in quests. The quest where you have to get the car out of the minefield in the badlands has some broken script, where the ambush can break if you even slightly go off the intended path. Like disabling all the mines first. Apparently, many other people have also witnessed no ambushes throughout their entire playthrough. So it's not an isolated issue or some "Works on my machine" response.

[RgR]

Cd projekt did not deserve all this.
They should stick to pc and forgo the consoles. Downsize their team back to how it was and continue to deliver great games.

Let them go unnoticed and let us enjoy them.

[ecchiless]

cry me more please...

[RgR]

Okay...
Is that like your fetish or something?

[badz149]

@RgR

greed has taken over them. don't you dare blame anything else! this is on them and only them alone and they deserve every single flak heading their way!

[RgR]

Do you see any loot boxes or micrograms actions?

Sorry no. Greed hasn't taken over. They made a bad decision. Especially for the base consoles.

Anyone who pre-ordered without waiting for the reviews on their platform of choice is a dimwit. Preordering is a stupid practice...especially through digital...I wish it had happened with a different game but I'm glad it backfired. Maybe some will grow a brain and stop preordering.

[CrimsonWing69]

Man, CDPR is a bunch of liars, now. I think it’s best they shut their f*cking mouths up, lay-low, and just get this game fixed. Quit making PR videos and apologizing because you got caught. Don’t respond to anything because now you’re coming off as more of the villain in this narrative.

I hope the industry learns 2 things from this:

1) Quit announcing games so early. Change this behavior to announcing a game a year or less before release.

2) No more fake demos and trailers. You want to be transparent? Then show the public the exact game that they’re getting. Enough with Watchdogging consumers and quite frankly, how is this practice legal? It feels like false advertising to me.

[Noskypeno]

Halo infinite got delayed specifically after the reactions to the demo. They coulda made a bullshot demo but they showed the honest gameplay and were forced to delay to improve it. If they pulled a ubi and the gameplay matched the 2018 and 19 trailers we'd be playing halo infinite right now.

[Gatsu]

Fake trailers have been around since forever though. They're surely not going away.

[CrimsonWing69]

Yea, it needs to stop is what I’m saying.

[RgR]

They got caught?

Youre making it seem like they were somehow sneaky with the release. The game released...all you have to do is play it and you'll see the difference.

Mind you that's the same with the witcher 3. Trailers are much more impressive than the finished game.

[CrimsonWing69]

They kind of were sneaky with the release.

I’ve never once seen reviews not being able to show footage from the game and could only use trailer footage. There was no transparency as to why, but most knew something was up from that.

You had the trailer showing PS4 and Xbox footage and even someone from the company saying how impressed they were with the performance on consoles.

So yea, I’m thinking they were being sneaky.

[RgR]

@Crimson

I was under the impression that all gameplay footage was on PC not on any console.
And as far as not allowed to show your own footage I do believe other devs have done that before.
Its definitley happened before.

And in terms of all that...it was made pretty clear what they were showing and what they were allowing. Thats not sneaky.

Sneaky would be avoiding the conversation or changing the subject. It doesnt seem like that was the case.
I dont get why a company would purposefully ruin their reputation which then impacts their future sales, consumers, investors and overall profit for the company.

It's not sneaky or anti consumer. It's just stupid. EA is anti consumer with their practices....and they profit from it every time. CDPR is not profitting from this.

[WillyC009]

The worst thing is that this game was initially 3rd person and designed to be that way only for it to change in development.

This game would have been so much better if it was 3rd person. I’m waiting on a patch for the PS4 version I’m playing on my PS5 to finish the game because of my crashing issue(every 45 minutes or so). After I finish it, I likely won’t play it again and go back to the Witcher 3.

[badz149]

3rd person? based on the wonky animation and the shadow behavior of the character currently in the game, I can't imagine how much more terrible the game would look than it currently is

[Gatsu]

It would have been worse in 3rd person and just wouldnt give the right feeling... Only good thing would have been that you could watch your character's ass. It was designed as 1st person with some 3rd person moments since the start, but they scrapped some of that.

[WillyC009]

Not accurate, you can find the whole write up that indicates 3rd person was the initial plan and part of the early development.

It was overhauled when Adam Badowski took over the lead on the project.

[RgR]

Have you played the other either games?

If not I highly recommend it....unless of course it's open world that you like.

[WillyC009]

There seems to be some misunderstanding from some people. A simple google search to find the whole article about the mess Cyberpunk created will show that initial plans, early development WAS for third person. It was changed to first person in around early 2017.

3rd person would have been a much better choice as far as I’m concerned considering the player ‘customization’ you never really see. The change of direction which included a story overhaul that began in 2017 also didn’t help.

[mastershredder]

I love the knuckleheads that try to defend this trainwreck of broken ethics and development. This is a prime example of when heads get too big, stop talking to oneanother, start listening to the wrong people and focus too hard on making a money machine. Cyberpunk was supposed to be a very milkable cash cow. Its pitch sounded way better than the execution.There is way more hands-off than with this title than project red will ever care to admit, but hey with Multi-platform results and QA this bad, it can't help but be noticed. Noice look guys.

[RgR]

A cash cow without any loot boxes or mtxs AND free dlc?

That's quite an interesting cash cow.

[Hitman007]

Game feels so rushed with systems not fully implemented and it shows just CD thinks were all stupid as they try and bullsht there way out of it like come on man up CD U fked up 💩💩

[Consistus]

I just bought Cyberpunk for €27,99!

[anast]

First, Mr. Bloomberg has only one interest and it's not gamers or the overall health of the industry, it's to sell his books and articles. And he generally hates most gamers. During a Yong interview, he told gamers to do letter campaigns if they have a problem with a company instead of posting on the internet. How many f'n execs and their assistants will actually read all of that mail? I bet the percentage is below 1% and not to mention the public will not see the collection of letters either. And to cherry this cake, the dude makes a living by posting on the net.

Second, CDPR mismanaged the sh"# out of this game, but they believed they could actually pull off everything they said, not a lie at the time. They lied about their mismanagement and released the game too early.

Third, there are dynamic events in the game, but it's not what they advertised, because of mismanagement. I have run across shootouts, robberies, the occasional pimp smacking some people and etc. And the car ambushes are triggered events with Maelstrom blowing up cars that sets off an ambush, of course it's different than the demo, where cars pull up along side you, but they are there and buggy as hell.

Fourth, they thought they could do Witcher 3 in a condensed city with only around 500 devs., they probably needed 4xs the amount of devs. to pull this off.

Fifth, the game doesn't ego stroke your character for every little thing he/she/they do, but since they said it would, CDPR dropped the ball on this one too.

Lastly, they lied about the state of the game on consoles.

And even with all of this, CP2077 is still more fun to play than anything UBI has released recently and most Bethesda games. Yet, with UBI and Bethesda, aside from graphics on UBI's part, we set the bar really low and with CDPR we rightly set the bar really high, which they didn't reach and destroyed a lot of people's trust along the way. Nevertheless, I'm going to stick around because I love the genre and I'm having fun.

[Father__Merrin]

If you go pc only and litter the rest out this is what will happen.

[Tetsdah]

This has been such an interesting saga. I was watching a 40 min compilation of the various interviews, quotes, and demo cuts collected over the years, and fuck did they overpromise the moon for this game.

The upper management knew the last gen versions were bad, but pushed for Dec release to maximize profit. They wanted that sweet holiday rush, so they not only did not want to delay it all together, they did not want to delay console versions for a port.

So now the questions is, was it worth it? CDP has:

Numerous lawsuits filed against them

Filesuits filed by their own investors

An investigation by their own government 's consumer protection staff

Currently withdrawn from the store of the largest console customer pool

A massive drop in company value

A huge stain against their reputation and extinguished massive amounts of their goodwill.

Really, was it worth it?

And I know YouTubers are ever so thankful for all the material to drag them with. And i know a lot of big channels gotta damage control since they were promoting this game.

And this is damning for critics as well. Them being able to hide console footage altogether, and restrict captured pc gameplay is entirely unacceptable. They should be culpable as well because they still chose to review the game despite those suspect conditions.

What a mess really.

[Rebel_Scum]

“ The upper management knew the last gen versions were bad”

You sure about that?

[Tetsdah]

Well go by a statement that they made in past.

https://www.gamesradar.com/...

Lol, unless that is up to interpretation. I'm sure they knew it going by them mandating no footage captured can be showcased in the review. And not providing console review code. Lastly the general review embargo being so close to launch.

Going by that recipe, I'm fairly confident they knew.

[Rebel_Scum]

I agree with you on the review builds. The consoles weren't ready for that. Most likely they were expecting the day 1 patch to resolve the issues with the old consoles, probably hit regressions which they weren't expecting and thats what got released.

Happens all the time in software development when there's crunch and an impending deadline to get a build out. There just ain't time to test for regressions.

Upper management were most likely told the day 1 patch was gonna resolve it. I'm not absolving them. But I doubt they were heavily involved in a user acceptance test capacity.