Cyberpunk 2077 2018 06 12 18 021

In case you missed it yesterday, CD Projekt Red livestreamed a 48 minute gameplay demo of Cyberpunk 2077, and if you haven't watched it yet, we strongly suggest doing so -- you can find it through here.

It was the same demo that the developer showed off to members of the press behind closed doors at E3 earlier this year, but why did the company wait over a month before showing it to everyone else?

Well, CD Projekt Red explains its decision in a hidden message that fans were able to pull from the aforementioned gameplay demo. It reads: "We think we owe you a few words of explanation on why we're showing you this gameplay now, some time after industry professionals and media saw it at E3 and Gamescom."

Basically, the developer goes on to say that it didn't want to give people the wrong impression. "For most people, when a game dev shows gameplay footage from their game, it means that this is how the game is going to look or play like," the message reads. "It's not the case here."

In other words, Cyberpunk 2077 could go through significant changes before it eventually releases. "Publishing videos like what you just saw [is] risky -- we don't want gamers saying 'but in that previous video that gun was shooting differently', or, 'why did you change the interface?'. Change is inherent to video game development and there's a ton of things being modified each day."

"Our fear was (and kind of still is) that you'll think what you just saw is how Cyberpunk 2077 will look [when it's finished]."

It's a reasonable fear from CD Projekt Red -- how often to we see people complain about how a game used to look back when it was still in development? It's the kind of thing that must drive developers mad.

So if that's the case, why did CD Projekt Red decide to go ahead and show the gameplay after all? "What gave us that extra confidence to show you a work in progress game? Good initial feedback from people who are accustomed to seeing games at various stages of development. What they told us (and they told us they really liked what they saw) gave us the boost we needed to show the current version of Cyberpunk 2077 to the most passionate and insightful audience -- you."

And there you have it. Again, we can't really blame the developer for being cautious -- we all know how much the internet likes its knee-jerk reactions.

[source reddit.com]