Well. This is a fine mess CD Projekt RED has found itself in over Cyberpunk 2077. We went from enormous levels of hype to outright damage control in just over a week. After that initial announcement 8 years ago and many delays, the long-awaited RPG finally arrived on 10th December but, put bluntly, the PS4 version has been shambolic to the Fallout 76th degree. We’ve seen bad launches before but never has Sony felt the need to actively intervene, outright delisting it from PSN and setting up a special system to offer refunds. Considering it barely works on base PS4s, running as low as 15 frames-per-second in some instances, it isn’t hard to see why. PlayStation fans deserved so much better.
PS4 Pro and PS5 functionality is generally more stable, though playing on a PS5 has noted crashing issues. Denying its current flaws would be disingenuous, and what we received is a far cry from what we were promised. We’re not saying there isn’t a good game at the core, though, we admitted as much in our review-in-progress. Cyberpunk 2077 offers a strong central storyline, great characters, and fantastic setting within Night City but on PS4, that potential has been squandered. Some have argued “what did you expect?” and there’s an easy answer to that. We expect it to work on the console it released on, it’s that simple.
Even before the imminent launch, red flags were showing. We received PS4 Pro and PS5 (via backwards compatibility) footage, but base PS4 previews were nowhere to be found. Suspicions were raised even further when CDPR only provided console review copies hours before launch. Having witnessed the sheer number of gameplay bugs, it’s easy to see why it tried to hide it.
That’s without even getting into the wider catalogue of issues surrounding this game, too. Namely CDPR’s crunch culture, negative depictions of the transgender community, CDPR’s initial offer of refunds, developers receiving death threats over delays, and that dangerous oversight within the (thankfully now patched) braindance sequence that caused epileptic seizures. We don’t wish to minimise these important matters, they need all acknowledging in full, but this isn’t the time for me to fully explore them.
This isn’t our first rodeo, and it follows a growing trend in gaming: release first, patch later. CDPR has form here, as The Witcher 3 also suffered numerous issues at launch, but comparatively, those weren’t nearly as bad. Odd bugs are one thing, but publishers are just straight up releasing fully priced games unfinished, an accusation we’d level at Bethesda, EA, and Ubisoft in particular. Expectation of bugs doesn’t excuse them, and you’d be mistaken if you think we’re blaming the individual developers. This isn’t the fault of your overworked animators, QA, level designers, and other hard-working staff members that games release in these states. It comes down to senior management, who knew exactly what state their game was in before signing it off.
Though many aspects factor into a bad launch, failure to manage expectations remains a major reason as it leads to player disappointment, which in turn amplifies the game’s more negative elements. Marketing is a powerful tool for any new game and as much as we don’t like to admit it, everyone is susceptible. Any PR team worth their salt set out to generate hype in numerous ways as this plays a critical role in shaping our perceptions, giving us bitesize breakdowns of key information in an appealing manner.
There isn’t a set rulebook each game follows though, and every release has its own selling point. Familiarity is a big one and consider the vast number of AAA games we see each year that relate to a wider franchise, as opposed to original stories. Sequels, prequels, remakes, and everything in between offer safe bets for studios who know they can bank on that brand, but that also carries a weight of expectation with it. We saw it happen with Mass Effect Andromeda, which we argued wasn’t a bad game, but compared to the critical acclaim Mass Effect’s previous entries saw, it was certainly a flawed one. As a result, criticism was amplified across the board.
Sometimes it comes from nostalgia when developers deliberately set out to invoke memories of past favourites. When a publisher doesn’t have any interest in continuing a franchise, spiritual successors are next in line. This is a frequent occurrence on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and we’ve seen it pulled off quite successfully with Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and Yooka-Laylee but likewise, it can also lead to games like Mighty No.9.
Designed as a Mega Man successor, it became one of Kickstarter’s biggest backed projects at the time in 2013, many of whom were fans unhappy at Capcom’s alleged neglect of the Blue Bomber. It pulled in people brilliantly but became a prime example of how not to advertise your game. After repeated delays, fans became cautious about its progress and any goodwill it had gained was slowly squandered, made worse by a cringeworthy trailer which even drew of the ire of the developers. Needless to say, it completely tanked after eventually releasing in 2016.
On other occasions, hype gets out of hand due to overpromising. We’d be remiss not to mention No Man’s Sky here and Hello Games’ ambitious space exploration game remains a prime example of what to avoid. Led by the studio’s founder Sean Murray, we could spend ages detailing just what went wrong, but after drawing in much attention for the project’s scope, it launched badly. Performance issues were everywhere and many features believed to be included, such as multiplayer, were nowhere to be seen. To Sean’s credit, he did try tempering expectations, but doing so the day before launch, after several years of hype, was never going to work.
It reached a point where it got referred to the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority, though this complaint was later dismissed. For many months, Hello Games went quiet and received heavy vitriol but instead of throwing in the towel, the team kept going. Ever since, we’ve witnessed a large number of free updates and as a result, No Man’s Sky now ranks as one of gaming’s biggest redemption stories, up there with Final Fantasy XIV. Lessons have clearly been learned since 2016 and only last year did Hello Games’ founder Sean Murray actively offer advice to EA and Bethesda, after ANTHEM and Fallout 76 had their own disastrous launches.
It’s a testament to CDPR’s marketing strength that it managed to secure an enormous 8 million pre-orders, carefully promoting curated events such as its Night City Wire streams, and expectations had built to a fever pitch. CD Projekt’s joint-CEO Adam Kaciński had taken measures to reassure investors it would be fine only a few weeks ago, saying that he believed the game is “performing great on every platform”. A far cry from their recent apology and later conference call, which admitted the company “did not spend enough time” looking at PS4 performance. Bafflingly, it even explained its ambitions for Cyberpunk 2077’s PS4 version is to make it a “good, playable, stable game, without glitches and crashes”. So, in other words, the bare minimum.
Put into context, you can hardly blame PS4 players for feeling misled, and the fact Sony intervened here speaks volumes. We’re in an unprecedented situation and that says all you need to know about the dire state of Cyberpunk 2077’s launch. We don’t believe the game is irredeemable and CDPR have made a clear commitment to improving its performance, calling the cost of patching the game “irrelevant”, but it should never have reached this stage. If it wants to turn this around, CDPR needs to get its act together fast. This saga isn’t one that’ll be forgotten anytime soon.
What do you think is going wrong with many of these big game releases? Is it a case of mismanaged expectations? Are publishers biting off more than they can chew? Is this a cautionary tale with regards to the hype train? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Comments 126
Two word lazy and Internet.
Why finish developing a game when you can update the game via the Internet.
"too big to fail" is basically the reason.
Publishers have decided that games have to be bigger, better, prettier, and more ambitious to draw in more and more attention. This requires hundreds of workers and millions of dollars on one single project. And you keep demanding more and more from your workers and your projects, it's going to come to breaking point.
And the hype, FOMO, and preorder culture has been built up to support this unsustainable model.
I'd much rather see those hundreds of workers working on a couple dozen smaller titles. Less risk, more mobility, more creativity. You know, like the indie scene.
It just comes down to money. Whether it is making sure a game is out before the Holiday season is over, or before the fiscal year ends, shipping what you have and fixing it later is more appealing than delaying and not getting those sales now.
Add in a bunch of other issues with major games, mainly the number of hours and people it takes to make them, and I feel like the model is not sustainable. As long as gamers continue to buy them though, publishers will keep at it.
@Gaming365247 I don't think Lazy is the world I'd use when the developpers have been crunching like crazy for awhile now.
Don't show the game too early.....
If you want to build the hype than make sure abt the product you r launching...
Don't make shady moves....
Otherwise consumers downright rejects it..
Honestly I don’t even understand why people praise and worships CDPR they only made one good game Witcher 3 and that game has clunky combat system and it’s only one game not like Bethesda that they made multiple great games and 1 or 2 trash games
Well at least we have Handsome Squidward in Cyberpunk 2077.
Developers have got to start respecting their customers more.
Too often games have tons of bugs at launch. They couldn’t do that 20 years ago, they tested and fixed until it was ready because they had no second chances.
Patching has made developers lazy, and I feel they also stopped respecting their audience/customers.
Not all developers do that, but some take the cake. And it’s not right.
Sony pulling the game has nothing to due with the games state and more to do with Cdpr saying anyone can get a refund without the approval of sony. As for the games state, bugs are going to happen and not all copies are going to experience the same bugs and yes this game has a lot of them but on ps5 I’ve personally have very few. So its a tossup on there side. Maybe they didn’t have as many bugs in play testing, maybe they need to hire new game testers and maybe they just said screw it and said we will fix it later like they did with Witcher (as a side note my copy of Witcher was way worse than cyberpunk is). But they need to do better in the future.
To be fair, I think Sony only intervened for two reasons:
-The visibility of this game is significantly higher than some other major "Triple A" releases which have released in similar states. The 8 million pre-order figure I feel is proof of the visibility.
-CDPR seemingly threw Sony under the bus with the refund situation.
I feel like Sony would of left well enough alone otherwise.
The hype has become way too much these days. The biggest issue is if the game was primarily a physical release, they would wait until it was good to go. But it seems you can release half a game, then update constantly moving forward. And you can update with DLC and microtransactions. I don't remember this being much of an issue with the PS3 era. It seems to have picked up steam this last gen.
How to ensure the worst game launch:
Step 1: have a lot of money invested in the game
Step 2: have short deadlines with no room for errors
Step 3: have even more money injected into the marketing campaign and start it way before the game is even playable
Step 4: decide to release the game regardless of its state desperately before Christmas
Note that all this is also valid for a console launch (looking at you PS5)
The only games I pre-order these days are Nintendo ones. They usually release a finished product and they rarely have sales. I am patient and can play a game a year or two after release, even the Nintendo ones that I have sat on my shelf.
Money. Quite simply investors, whether internal or external, are given assurances in a return at a given time. Some delay can be allowable, especially for games where ongoing DLC work is budgeted for anyway, but missing this launch window and not releasing in good time for last pay day before Christmas would be difficult. Even with pre orders.
@Enigk Exactly, Nintendo cannot be faulted in regards to releasing finished games.
Sure, they had to touch up BotW with some small patches, but even the frame rates issues on that were blown out of proportion compared to everything else on that massive game that were so well executed at launch.
Someone could put a BotW cartridge into a Switch for the first time in 2050 and without patches still be playing one of the best games ever. That can’t do that for ANY triple-A game on PS4 or Xbox. Without patches those things are broken.
We need more reliable companies that release finished games that don’t need day one patches.
@Gaming365247 don't forget investors that give the devs no other choice. There is a reason why first party games usually are in much better shape, because they don't require investors nearly as much and can decide things more based on quality rather than an investor's happiness
This is one of the big reasons why I'm more interested in retro gaming at the moment, they weren't all perfect but I've yet to find any that were unplayable. I'm sick and tired of buying games and then having to wait for them to be fixed.
Then you have things like microtransactions and games being designed around them, so even if you don't take up the "option" they so considerately sell to you, then you'll still be playing a worse version of the game much of the time.
I'll still be playing modern games but most of my gaming budget and time will likely be directed to older consoles and games from now on
I mean if you're going to tweet out you're offering no questions asked refunds, it needs to be removed from sale to protect both Sony and CDPR's financial interests. Else you'd likely get loads of people buying it, completing it quickly, and then refunding it.
I remember way back, when people used to get so frustrated at id. They always said "when it's done". This is the single best answer any developer can give, and no one should even offer a release date until they've finished the game.
1. FINISH your game
2. Hype your game (note: make sure step 1 has happened.)
3. Sell your game (note: make sure step 1 has happened.)
@GKO900 - Someone said it! SOMEONE ACTUALLY SAID IT! I completely agree as well, no one gave a damn about CDPR or The Witcher Series until The Witcher 3, putting them on a pedestal for no reason really. Which is why I never understood the hype for CP2077, it seemed more like people were hyping it up simply because it was made by CDPR.
Excellent article, thank you. I see this as a power move by Sony to simultaneously put CDPR in their place, restore the legitimacy of their brand (regarding their certification process) and also set a new precedent moving forward for other developers and perhaps their own internal refund policy.
In an unbelievably short sighted move, CDPR tried to get away with something here at the cost of player trust and relationships with developers, collaborators, the media and shareholders. They used the system to control the narrative to make bank and in the process have lost everything that made them valuable.
I love the game, but it is clearly unfinished and this mess can only rest on upper management and their abysmal handling of the situation. The optimist in me believes people can learn and grow and that can ultimately make CDPR a better, more transparent company and by proxy result in a better industry.
It’s hard to speculate too much without more behind the scenes knowledge, but I’m sure the inevitable Jason Schreier piece will shed a more intimate light on what happened here.
I have faith that everyone involved can come out the other side of this a better person but the road will be long and hard. Let’s keep the conversation professional and civil as their are livelihoods on the line here and people do make mistakes. A positive outcome benefits us all. Sony did the right thing here.
IMO it comes down to needing more money and they need to get that from us the consumer. They'd rather release a broken product that they can fix instead of having to pull the plug. They should have just released it on PC with the promise of it coming to consoles when it was ready. The fact that PC seems to be going good, but PS4/5 is not shows they should have done 1 over the other.
It's about the top executive want the money NOW, regardless of it's studio reputation or gamers satisfaction, to think cdp can be the next rockstar or blizzard of old where gamers can buy their games without reviews because it's usually really good, all of it vanish because the executive can't wait to receive their money later.
And to think sony wants to charge $70 for next-gen games
Pressure. Pressure from above, pressure from publishers, pressure from fans. Pressure to get the game out there, with an increasing disregard for quality.
There's just not enough testing. And by testing, I mean what used to be referred to as "fat fingered" testing. By this, I mean pressing a combination of buttons at inopportune moments and making sure the software doesn't crash. No amount of unit tests can replace that.
Games had to be tested to destruction in the PS2 era but since the PS3 days we now seem to have huge release day patches that replaces most of what's on the disc.
It's a fascinating, albeit ugly saga, that really brings into question the state of games development today. For all of its development time Cyberpunk 2077 has been the poster child for big, ambitious, AAA-heavyweights. Every delay saw countless games adjust their release schedules, every demo looked impossibly good, etc.
But they obviously reached a point where they just had to get the game out there, no matter what. But to me they've ended up as the poster child of the warnings you hear of AAA development being unsustainable. The answer to that is higher prices and/or longer development times, as we're seeing with Sony's first party efforts. If a game like Cyberpunk was polished enough from the off and lived up to all its lofty promises, I could totally see the justification for charging £60/70/whatever. But if we keep trying to cram in genre-defining experiences to the old way of doing things, you risk getting...gestures...this. And now we have disappointed fans and heartbroken devs that have put years of their lives and all that crunch time into making something they truly care about, only for it to crash and burn when it's out in the wild. It's a really sad tale and I hope CDPR can turn it around without demanding even more unreasonable working conditions of their employees.
One thing is the biggest factor here, Pre-Orders! The peoples inability to wait 7 to 10 days after launch to buy a game. They feel the need to be the first to play titles. We have pre-downloads so players can play at midnight the day of launch.
Dev's need to allow all versions of titles to have reviews out 7 days before release. It takes years to make a new game whats 1-2 more weeks waiting on reviews. While your at it define the numbering system, what is a game rated 5 mean. That should be your adverage game right in the middle of 1-10.
Then its up to the consumer to make the choice that best fits their needs. Only after consumer are given to tools they need to make that choice. Then anyone that pre-orders a game the fault lies on their own shoulders. The blame is only on them and they should be the only one accountable for their won actions. Yes its very harsh but still its true.
@Gremio108 this is a beautifully succinct post that nicely wraps up this whole debacle.
@Richnj Some fairly amazing stuff comes out of the indie scene, so I love that it's there, but I really can't imagine gaming without ambitious AAA titles as well. They just need to be executed better, well, some of them at least.
But I wholeheartedly agree with your take on fomo and preorders. Though I do wonder how developments would be affected if there weren't people to preorder. I was under the impression this was an important source of revenue but then, admittedly, I don't know that much about it.
Edit: fixed some swipe errors
This is what happens when you announce a game too early. If this had a 1-2 year cycle, there literally wouldn't be enough time to build up the amount of hype people had at the start of December 2020.
One major player in overhyping products is omitted regularly - besides the marketing dpt. and “toxic” fans - is imo the so called “enthusiast” press and influencers. Every party should take ample blame from situations like this. I wonder when the first article will appear in the press which discusses the possibilities of fair coverage without taking publisher statements for face value and also not succumbing to their own (oftentimes false) hype.
Reasons why:
1. Gamers allow themselves to be fooled easily, I mean as soon as Fallout 76 was announced it would be online focused, that should have been a HUGE red flag, but NOPE.
2. Gamers have accepted mediocrity for too long and Developers know they can make mistakes, make a false apology and will automatically be given a pass, especially if it's a Developer most gamers love.
3. Gamers moan and complain whenever a game is delayed and that puts even more pressure on these developers, CP2077 could have benefitted from at LEAST another 3 month long delay, thus I'm sure most issues currently present would have been addressed, but if they had, people would've complained.
4. Gamers have accepted Day One Patches as the norm, thus why Games are often released with numerous bugs and glitches. Games nowadays have more issues than the games we played back in the day, there's really no excuse for that.
5. Gamers overhype games more for the studio behind it and less for the game itself these days.
This scenario is why I almost never preorder games nowadays. I want to be sure I'm getting a quality product.
I think people looked up to CDPR because they made a great game in The Witcher 3 but also they preached about being "for the consumer" with multiple free DLC and big expansions at reasonable prices. Core gamers were desperate for someone to come along and show the greedy corporations that there are other ways to have successful AAA games without the greed. And CDPR stepped up to that role (probably too gleefully) but at the end of the day if your going to position yourself as some sort of public saint then be absolutely sure your clean cos the fallout will be greater.
It did get me thinking though, there's one developer who practiced what CDPR preached this year. They put out a big open world game with huge production values, didn't crunch (at least not to CDPR's extent), it came out very polished, it runs at 60FPS on PS5 with very few drops if any, they didn't have trailers that mislead consumers with how the game looked or showed characters in scene they were never going to be in. They threw in free DLC and a free multiplayer modes with no microtransactions. It's no wonder Sucker Punch's Ghost of Tsushima is many people's GOTY.
@JustPlainLoco Exactly, glad I’m not the only one that thinks the same, and just wait for the multiplayer that’s where they are gonna recover the money for fixing this mess, but I could be wrong
@zupertramp Well, as far as I understand it, preorder are important, ironically, to small indie devs and projects. They require that money to keep the lights on and staff paid. Big companies have the financial banking to wait for that revenue to come in.
Take CDPR for instant. They were able to fund this game for 8 years, and covered the costs in the preorder phase, were still able to give out refunds like it was nothing because they are worth $bns and know that even if they make less, it's not like they are going to lose money here. Whether they get that money before or after release makes little difference to their business.
@MemSec you may find this as interesting as I did. https://www.google.ca/amp/s/venturebeat.com/2020/12/16/cd-projekt-red-risked-the-reputations-of-others-to-insulate-cyberpunk-2077/amp/
@Jimmer-jammer Read that same article. Brutal and on the nose at the same time. Seems like all of their deceptions have been so calculated, which is the most depressing thing about this imo.
@zupertramp yeah I felt it shed valuable light from the media’s perspective on just how much, as you said, calculated control CDPR actually took here. Pretty damning stuff
Maybe I haven't played it long enough, or maybe because I am playing on Xbox One X, but I haven't really noticed any huge problems with the game. PC version it is not; but I don't think it looks terrible. I did have to reload a save file because a Story Mission didn't progress properly despite meeting the requirement, but that was the only issue I have had - and that was pre 1.04 patch.
I haven't noticed major performance hits, either. I don't do the whole "run and gun" thing, so perhaps my slower stealthy/cover and shoot playstyle doesn't reveal performance problems that have been noted by Digital Foundry that can dip even lower than PS4 Pro (i.e. I try to avoid bombastic shoot-outs at all cost). Driving around feels fine to me as well - but I also don't "gun it" unless I have a long straight-away.
All-in-all, I am really enjoying the game - but, again, not playing on a base system, either.
@Jimmer-jammer
While the article states important things, and the proposed manipulation of the media was surely the case, the press still did jump on the hype train. When it was in their interest to overhype the product, they did exactly that. After the launch debacle everyone who praised the product suddenly sang a different tune. I simply can’t see them as the victims in this situation, they benefit either way because of traffic, and the press also has often manipulated situations to their own interests.
@GKO900 You definitely aren't the only one. I've said for years that TW3 was grossly overhyped and overrated for a modestly well-written and mechanically flawed action-adventure game slathered with half-baked RPG elements. Talk about gamers acting like I gored a sacred ox.
@MemSec I completely agree with you and believe the author was doing their own damage control but thought that it provided a nice little window into just how badly CDPR has behaved here.
I know this won't be popular, but I really think these developers need to stop worrying about systems which can't run their games properly and focus on next-gen. People will buy those systems in due time.
@AdamNovice Jesus, had to get your little dig in at You Know What.
🤦
Ironically ND are one of the best AAA studios out there when it comes to releasing polished products at launch. A lot of studios could learn from them.
As for Cyberpunk...it's sad although I always suspected this would be one to wait for on PS5. Doesn't help PS4 players who have definitely been royally screwed and even the PS5 version has issues.
It's sad but I reckon they'll get it right and when they do it will truly be a game worth playing. Lessons for other studios though.
I like this article.
@GKO900 While I don't think CDPR is worthy of any praise, The Witcher and The Witcher 2 were both exceptionally good games for their time and both had elements that were far better than The Witcher 3, though obviously some elements that were also worse.
@Gremio108
Get out of here, they had 8 years to make the game 8 YEARS and delivery such a mess. I agree with @JustPlainLoco cdpr and the witcher are mediocre until the witcher 3.
It's not bloody rocket science. They release games that aren't sodding finished. Ubi are particularly bad, it's not just cdpr
What do you expect when consumers will buy anything that's hyped to hell? Just look at The Game Awards every year. While a few legitimately good games get in that aren't AAA hits (Hades, for example), for the most part.. the winners are just the big hype train games, regardless of whether or not they're good or bad. Even sometimes when they're good, they're so much worse than other games that made it out, but those aren't the ones people are playing because they weren't the big hype.
Putting these insane expectations on games creates an endless cycle where shady developers force their employees to crunch, they release a subpar product with the intention of just patching in any unfinished work and then people find the next new thing to hype over.
The only thing that will stop these developers from thinking they can just do this over and over is if consumers see it coming and they stop buying these games. Anthem got away with the same *****, except it was even worse and even bricked systems. I'll say this.. at least Sony was willing to remove the game from the PSN. Maybe it'll be a wake up call for other developers or at least consumers.
@Dan_ozzzy189 Ubisoft isn't as bad as EA at this point. But all the AAA third party studios do it to an extent. It's par for the course to release an unfinished game and expect people to buy the rest in small chunks. Or just have a broken game, like Anthem.
The games are released before they are finished because, ultimately, they need to meet a deadline that has been publicly announced. You can only delay so many times before the public is cautious. The solution is to not announce the games so early. Don't announce them at all until it is fully working and will be released in less than a year, and there is almost no predictable chance of a delay.
With Cyberpunk, I can only assume various employees in various positions all knew the game wouldn't be released on time. Some developers and publishers might struggle with this financially, but almost all of the examples mentioned in the article have sufficient funding and could have had more time.
@carlos82 I've been console gaming since the mid 80s and while a lot of old games have strange bugs and glitches, most of the issues they faced were nearly insurmountable limitations of hardware at the time. They knew they had to get it the game right the first time because the printed copy was it. No more changes after that, beyond making a remake a few years later. Games were much more reliable then, amusingly.
When we hit the digital age, it felt like games were going to be better and better because you could fix any issue post launch, but instead of using it as a tool to fix small issues that were missed in quality control, it's being used largely as a means to get games out faster in a broken state because meeting street date and coming in at or under budget is more important than offering a finished product. It's sad.
Why does a game need to be announced 8 f***n years in advance? Just unhealthy...
The financial blow being seen with CD Projekt Red (OTGLY) should be a lesson to all gaming companies thinking it's okay to release incomplete games. Sure, they sold over 8 million pre-orders, but their stock has crashed from $31 (4-Dec) to just under $19 (today). With over 96 million outstanding shares, that's over $1.1 billion in losses.
And that's before refunds start depleting that 8 million pre-order number.
The only games I feel comfortable Preordering is Nintendo stuff because they very rarely drop in price year 1 and they're guaranteed to be released when ready.
Not many companies would scrap full games and restart development (Prime 4) because it wasn't up to standard.
This is why I wait a day before release to pre-order games. Been doing this for at least 3 years now and I’m never let down. I always preorder First party PS4 titles because I know the quality will be there. The buggiest game I’ve preordered was Days Gone and I knew that going in but I had an itch to play it so I got it day 1.
@Col_McCafferty Lmao what side of the bed did you get out off? I was only talking facts so don't blame me if you get tetchy for pointing something on the subject of misleading consumers.
2 words...AGILE METHODOLOGY
This is a religion in business and has infected all things technical, including devops, that is founded on the principle of creating a MINIMALLY VIABLE PRODUCT, so as to start reaping the core benefits (often: sales) of software asap, then 'iterate' moving forward until you get a finished product (or more often, they get cheap and quit spending dollars to complete a project 100%). It does not account for the importance of consumer goodwill, critical mass benefits, or the need to complete anything at all. Add to that, the increasing pressure develop for all platforms, thereby maximizing availability, and the MVP is really an alpha or a beta release.
@neenja Bingo. Only solution I can think of involves nukes and orbital bombardment, though. I see no hope at all of that ever improving short of a near extinction event.
@3MonthBeef There's one other major reason the gaming industry gets away with this when no other industry does. Some of it is basic human psychology but for gaming you have to consider the average age and that each new console generation is aimed at a new, inexperienced human generation. Each launch is like starting new for the first time. They can pull the same lie and tricks over and over because they know their core market was in kindergarten when they last did it 7 years ago, and has too much eagerness, too little impulse control, and a complete lack of context and history, mixed with an hubris that tells them everything in their world is so much better than the people older than themselves because they're so much smarter.
The companies know how easy that is to exploit, over and over and over, with no end possible.
@GKO900 Because all the people that praise CDPR don't really give a flip about their games, they just celebrate GOG, their DRM-free PC digital store. The idea of DRM-free digital content resonates so strongly that the only company offering it (or one of two, now) has been elevated to internet godhood despite not really making many games at all, only one truly iconic one, and clearly not consisting of very high integrity leadership.
Unfortunately its more likely the pressure from the boardroom to ensure the shareholders earn money because at the end of the day they are the only ones that truly matter to a company, and all that matters to shareholders is money.
In most cases is has nothing do to with pride in something the company produces or respect to the workforce that slave away through crunch after crunch to ensure those shareholders earn their money for doing f all work.
They just want their dollar in their pocket.
@Onigumo I get what you're saying, but CDPR are no Rockstar or Ubisoft. They're a decent-sized company but they're not that big. Eight years is a long time, true, but look how long it's taking for these GTAs and Red Deads to come out, or the mainline Elder Scrolls/Fallout games.
@StonyKL
I’m sure the shareholders are pleased with their stocks now being worth 39% less than pre-launch.
Still sitting on my shelf unopened... Part of me wants to open and try it on my PS5, part of me wants to wait for the update, and part of me wants to return it... WTD??? :::scratches head:::
Way to flip the script back at CDPR by Sony. Even national newspapers have been reporting on it here, resulting in major loss of face for CDPR.
I'm starting to think that CDPR started marketing the features they will add on Cyberpunk even before developing it. The A.I is almost non-existent in this game that it might actually need an overhaul and what about their stupid wanted level system wherein the cops keeps spawning to your location instantly even though you killed by stealth. The cops won't even chase you by car because there's probably no A.I driving system in this game. The lifepath is a joke as well.
@neenja As a developer who is working agile (not in games mind you), I feel the need to defend the method. What it all comes down to is how you define "done" and "minimal viable". You can have perfectly fine working software in an agile environment.
Having the game not crash every few hours, run above 15FPS, those are minimal requirements every sane publisher would write down for their product.
It's mismanagement of course. And the fact that the game went gold, but then still got delayed, was already a big warning sign, that CD Projekt Red was in big trouble.
"It’s a testament to CDPR’s marketing strength that it managed to secure an enormous 8 million pre-orders"
8 million include the 60% PC version. That has a "positive rating" on Steam after 200K reviews and 52 Million hrs played.
We got our game. Ps4 cant run it, wait for the PS5 version
Age of Calamity, Ritual of the Night, RIME, FairyTail, The Wonderful 101: Remastered all ran like garbage on weaker hardware like the Nintendo Switch.
So not sure how this is a "Big game launches" problem.
It must be bad because it was just mentioned on the BBC1 main News a second ago Everyone keeps saying these types of PC like games will be the best thing ever but they never are. Hopefully SONY can keep the quality of their Exclusive games up to the high standards it has been doing because that is all I care about and not these made for PC like games. Saying that the game looks cool tho, the future setting and that.
@Gremio108
I disagreee, since 2018 the cdpr stock market is in pair of those big companies like ubisoft or 2k. RDR2 take 6 years to development, gta V was make in 3 years, assasins creed origins was make in 4 years. 8 years are 2 presidencial mandate friend, its a very long time to make ( or in that case doest make) a game.
@Richnj this game only checks off one of those, being prettier if you have the highest end pc graphics card with dlss.
However its not big, nor lengthy, and lacks AI in an empty shell of a world. I think CDPR just bit off more than they could chew. The scope of this project was never fully realized and it feels like they built a world based on ambition that they ultimately could not execute or had to cut out, and did so leaving consumers, and even investors in the dark until the last minute.
They gained a lot of hype from the Witcher 3, yet have not grown in prowess since then. The loot system is nearly identical in this game to that and both are awful.
There's various reasons why AAA games are just not really the same compared to the standard we had years ago, and there's plenty of reasons already listed as to why Cyberpunk isn't doing so hot right now, but I honestly think a major reason is because the game was just too ambitious for current technology. They had worked on this game for so long that I feel like whatever ideas they had would have been better realized if they had made it with the new consoles in mind. That's the major impression I keep getting from articles and reviews about this game since it came out.
Would it take longer? Yeah, and maybe it wouldn't have worked out either, but I think it's a better option than making something for systems that clearly can't run it properly.
It's also important to not overlook, or suggest that the game runs better on the PS5, it absolutely does not. It may have better framerate and a slightly increased dynamic resolution range, but the crashing issues are severe and far more widespread than this article implies.
CDPR may have just tanked their future. I wouldnt be surprised if we start seeing some of its more talented story creators poached to other developers.
If they do have a next project it will be met with such a high magnitude of scrutiny, that they will be forced to keep it under the radar until they can be transparent about how it plays. I just don't see them recovering from an investment perspective in a way that they can even start another project unless they fix this game and fix it fast. However the content of the game is so lacking and not near what they promised that they would also have to create additions there as well.
CDPR deservedly faces quite the hole to climb out of. Hopefully this sends a message to developers that they cannot continue this practice of using consumers as beta testers after taking their money for an advertised finished product.
@Mpquikster exactly, its absurd to say that the developers at the below mgmt level bear no responsibility. They were on the front lines of testing how this game performed. NDA is no excuse for willful deception of your fanbase. They are equally to blame here.
Someone VERY EASILY could have blown the whistle on this anonymously at the very least.
I'm beginning to wonder if we are at a watershed moment for the gaming industry, similar to the switch from 2D to 3D, when a lot of game makers had to exit the industry because they couldn't do the new math required. Some studios may have to step back and realize they arent equipped to make AAA games any more, and refine their focus to a more AA/Indy style, or face extinction. Companies with aging engines and talent that was stretched last gen aren't going to find the going any easier against top tier talent from Sony's first party this gen. AAA game design is only getting more complex, and CDPR's vision clearly outstripped their ability even on PC. All the brute force in the world can't squash the bugs and fix the AI. The worst sin of all was their lies of course, and Sony should have known better to take their word that the day 1 patch would fix a game in such poor shape.
Best Buy in the States is offering full refunds on physical copies until 21-Dec, even if they've been opened. Full refunds...not in store credit...and BB never refunds opened games. That's HUGE.
I've been having lots of lols about this whole affair. I've been lolling and lolling and lolling!
Because it's an unsustainable business model.
Just look at Capcom, they tried to compete with the biggest players, with most profoundly Resident Evil 6.
They couldn't fully bite over the project they had set themselves for. And was seriously punished for it.
And many of today's AAA are just as bloated as RE6, if not much, much more. There's so much mediocre content in these games, and the developers can't cope with the scope of it and there's bugs, bugs and bugs again (and it's only getting worse it seems).
Capcom learned their lesson and now they only release games, I would consider AA in today's market. They learned the hard way about their limitations as a relative small company. And are doing really well today it seems.
Maybe as consumers we are too impatient and get fooled by each little marketing trick and social media pool? I loved the days of magazine reviews, as games were played, tested and given a score before a game hit the shelf. Nowadays the big corps control the consumer. Vote with your wallet and be patient with your wallet are my standard vigilance to any product nowadays. Isn't there a pearl of wisdom that goes like 'Only fools rush in?'
On one hand you got developers working thousands of hours on one game over the years it's Christmas with next gen consoles coming out so its now or never. They need to get paid to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table. They knew when testing gameplay and bug fixing for console that it plays like sh#* but hey Its pay day, release the game in its poor state for the consoles and enough with the delays.
The consumers have been waiting long enough and just want to play the game, sucked in by the hype, and not thinking about why the embargo few days from release with reviews only available PC journalist with no doubt pretty good PC rigs and limited footage only allowed to be shown, this should be a warning sign they got something to hide.
No doubt this will be an excellent game in 6 months time. Hell people said it took 3 years for SFV to be a game it should've been at launch.
I'll be waiting for Cyberpunk complete edition in 2023.
I think showing 'PS4 gameplay' close to launch that didn't represent the true picture is pretty bad. Its not a new idea, I remember picking up C64 games on cassette in the 80s with screens shots from the Amiga on the box. However, it would at least say 'screen shots from Amiga and Atari ST version', you knew your 8-bit game was not going to look like that. Dark Souls 2 was one I fell for, rushing out to buy the game at launch on PS3 as a fan of the first, to find a game that looked nothing like as good as pre release 'gameplay'. I always wait now to see the actual version I am buying before I purchase. It needs to stop really though, and a better refund policy on psn would encourage company's to think twice before pushing out unfinish games.
Regarding updates, on an interesting aside, I recently bought Dirt 5 on PS4 and tried the unpatched disc release before I updated it. All of the surface animation (mud, water splashes and so on) was missing prior to the patch.
@Gaming365247 You are damn right.
The moment all consoles could be connected to the Internet to download updates is the moment the quality of the games start to do down.
Back then the developers test the games to make sure the products is at least playable.
@Kidfried "As a developer...I feel the need to defend the method" Careful, you bias is showing--in the form of excellent keywords and sentence structure.
People drank Kool-aid and blamed (mis)management before Agile too, only the EA's, Ubi's, et al mostly had to choke down the waterfall of early losses for their short-comings instead of consumers. In another decade Agile will be old news and the acolytes will move on to new definitions of this or that workflow management while people will swear at a new alter, but still, as they say, "People plan, God laughs." So what is your next big project?
Merry Christmas (and pardon the well-spirited snark)!
Simple they release a broken mess people buy it it gets fixed. Rinse repeat
The end line to all is (as usual): It's business.
I honestly think the bugs and glitches can be easily forgivable if only CDPR had been transparent but nope. They deliberately prevent anyone from releasing early in-game footage to media outlets for review because they know many people will cancel their pre-orders ahead of launch and that's what fueling the hatred towards CDPR more than anything else.
It's not about the crunch - while that's despicable, it's not what makes a game good or bad.
It's not about the delays - I think most of us can agree this would have been healthier if the console editions, at least, had been delayed into 2021.
It's all about putting a deadline ahead of quality, and it's about badly managing expectations - including outright lying. It's about saying the game runs great on all consoles shortly before launch, when that was clearly a blatant lie. It's about saying the game is done and has gone gold when it wasn't anywhere near ready on console, and hardly bug-free on PC. It's about hiding the console editions from reviewers because you knew how bad it was. Heck, it's about promising you can take time off work in November, that there won't be any more delays, when what you needed was a LONGER delay than you announced!
It's about caring more about the publicity you drove yourself than the product you're selling or the customers you're selling to.
Companies care less and less about the actual quality of their games. Period. That is it. If you got a problem with it I suggest you quit buying games before they come out, and quit buying season passes. If not then things are only going to continue to get worse. So yeah, wake up. Oh and you journalists and general populace really need to quit acting like piecemeal DLC and staggering a release is something that's required for a game to be financially successful. It's not. Whatsoever.
@Richnj you got the prettier part right, focusing on superficialities instead of a truly well made product.
@neenja yeah I love it when people try to tell you a business model isn't deeply flawed just because it's been in use for a long time. It's a gigantic logical fallacy.
Maybe respect your customers more and it's about time that shareholders are not in charge and Devs and management have full control, CEOs stop demanding that games be done in a shorter period to be patched later so it pleases the stock makers. But that will never happen ever because money talks and myself included have let that happen at least once, I don't buy games new any more last game I bought new was Spiderman on PS4 before that Final Fantasy 10 and Metal Gear Solid 2 on PS2.
Verterns of that era NES in the 80s to PS2 early 00s have probably had the best gaming gens ever and that's gone now. Because PS3 Xbox 360 era started it off we wanted more content they did but then realised it could be cut and sold and we lapped it up, we want games to be massive look amazing and have lots of content. But that demand for good looking big games take a while and costs loads and to do that they do what they do and unfortunately we get games like 2077 and others that bugged broken and released because demands wants it
@Onigumo It is a bloody long time, I'll give you that, and you'd be well within your rights to expect it to work properly. But if it isn't finished, it shouldn't release
Stop with all this pre-order crap on digital games ffs.Cash on delivery or cash on demo.
It goes wrong because shareholders, the accounting department and ceos don’t let middle/upper management and devs do their job on a realistic timeline. The public also puts pressure as well.
A lot of shareholders think it is worth the risk of PR backlash to chase money now. Which sorta works most of the time because usually consumers don’t rally this hard. It seems like it because of the internet but in general the average consumer either trades it in or keeps the game than going through hoops for a refund. Those that do are often acceptable losses. It’s like EA and micro transactions: for every boycott or pitchfork, 100 people are lined up to buy.
Same as every mid sized to large company.
For indies that is usually a “bit off more than they can chew” thing.
Well, it's obvious when you look at the people that defending CDPR right now... Gamers/consumers just doesn't care or punish those company that launching half-baked games...
Marketing triumph over Reputation in game industry... Look at Bioware. Despite the mess they made for Mass Effect Andromeda & Anthem, people are still excited for the newly announced Dragon Age & Mass Effect. smh...
@deathaxe Please, they had 8 million pre orders that if you estimate 50 a unit is 400,000,000. Half a billion. That alone would be enough to keep the banks at bay. Please, these were choices this company made to delibrately mislead and obscufate the state of this game on certain platforms. They duped the public, duped their employees then put the onus on them. Did any of the leadership do mandatory 6 day weeks?? Probably not.
What ever happened to AA games? Everything is AAA or indie. AAA releases buggy and then fixes it after launch, and indies release in a pretty complete state because they usually don't get a second chance. The worst offenders are pay to beta test games. Oops, I mean "early access."
Anyway, in a week or two something else will happen and no one will be talking about Cyberpunk anymore, and I'll be pretty safe from spoilers until I eventually buy it a year from now. I don't buy or play most games until 6-12 months after release. It's going to take them that long to fix it, and by the time they do the game's price has halved at least. Honestly it's a good situation for anyone who doesn't have FOMO. The best version of a game is usually its cheapest version, and if you're lucky they'll reprint as "GOTY" so you have all the patches on disc for later. Buying at launch is becoming a sucker's game more and more, and publishers should really be upset and wary of that attitude taking root among consumers.
There is one particular thing about Cyberpunk 2077 that just don´t add up to me. Everthing points out that the game was made to run only on current-gen consoles and high end PC machines. But the game was announced with a trailer at 2018 E3, when there was absolutly no talks about what would come after PS4 and Xbox One. So.. what gives?
I guess at some point on 2018/2019 CD Projekt Red received a dev kit for PS5 and Xbox Series X and that was their doom. Their focus on making the game work on PS4 and Xbox One got blown away as they tryed juggling making the best possible game for both the then current and next-gen consoles.
Now Cyberpunk 2077 is at a terrible limbo where the game doesn´t work properly on last-gen consoles and there is no actual version for the ones of the current-gen.
Full disclosure, I own a PS4 a Switch and my last MS hardware was a Xbox 360. Having said that, I have to give props to Nintendo on really protecting their IP it is really a rare thing to see a buggy game come out for one of their major IPs, even if they take years to develop. A lot of this may be that games are trying more and more to be platform agnostic but I think that's causing them headaches as well. The one platform that most people can agree on Cyberpunk fairly well is Stadia. I scoffed at that platform when it came out but I do believe that's the future of gaming. Not that I'd trade my PS4 or Switch in but if you truly want to be platform agnostic then maybe cloud gaming is the way to go. Else find a platform, design for it and stick to it. I'm not sure you can try on run on everything easily anymore. I can't imagine the grind devs had to go through to TRY and pull that off.
The obvious answer would be CDPR bowing to fan pressure. They delayed the game twice and there was a lot of negative feedback.
Had they had just delayed the PS4/X1 release until march they could have released in with no bugs. They chose to launch it incomplete because the fans demanded they do so.
Now I’m just worried about Skate 4, because they will try to make it the biggest and most detailed skating game and it will take a loooooong time to release and the actuall quality could take a hit by this.
Article is confusing games that have unacceptable performance issues at launch with games somehow overhyped.
Being overhyped is an issue that's worth a discussion. Who s fault is it?
Performance issues are a very different topic and only the studio / publisher are to blame.
I can't stop thinking about God of war. A very hyped game who showed very little gameplay before release, had a very difficult 1 camera style and still came out almost flawless. Now I know open world games have way more posibilities for bugs but I do think that cdpr bite off wayyy more then they could chew. With witcher3 they showed they can do open world but still i think a more linear story driven gamestyle like GoW would have made this game amazing.
Developers aren't tasked with being an artist or needing to create art for success. Mediocre games can make profits and there is no harsh reality, where your failures really impact you. EA, Bethesda, Ubisoft, 2K, all of them can produce some basic ***** and sell millions. They are the equivalent of your teenagers "arts", really just some basic stuff that people act impressed from. The criteria for success isn't being based off of the value of what is produced, it is the value of profits made, which are easy in an easily impressed consumer. There is a HUGE market for people who will accept too much compromise in what they purchase. This allows the development of the game to focus on things other then the game itself, and the quality of the game is not a priority.
I see two issues here. Pre- ordering and hype are not the two issues. The issues are a game released with unacceptable performance on consoles it was released to play on and therefore was expected to work properly by those that purchased it. The second issue is that the company that released the game knew completely of the unacceptable performance on some consoles but still released it for those consoles.
Pc gaming is different than consoles in that minimum and suggested requirements can be announced. Want 120 fps 4K? Well you may have to upgrade.
With consoles that is not possible. Consoles are not upgradeable other than hard drives on last gen and unknown on current gen. If a game is releaseded with the PS4 or Xbox logo on it than those that purchased the game expect it to work. Work, not do they like the game play or story, but work like proper frame rates, clear not blurry graphics, missions and save files working properly, and rare crashings.
@JustPlainLoco...... Yeah..... You and @GKo900 are correct., and if you think about it, CP2077 is the 1st game to be liked/hyped due to its developer and not the game itself........
Being able to release a game before it's finished, and then relying on patches and DLC content to save it afterwards.
@zupertramp..... Pre-orders are like taking an exam or test knowing fully well that if you fail it you can take it again with minimum to no significant consequences.
Killing pre-orders will create the situation of writing an exam with full knowledge that if you fail the is next to no second chance. Hence the pressure to release a product that will be a knock out of the park........ This is how the quality was maintained in the ps1 and ps2 Era.
The ps1 was a relatively low spec system, yet if you were a developer you couldn't complain and says you couldn't do this or that because of system constraints, you had to make it otherwise you would look incompetent.
Nowadays devs have so many tools and even better and powerful hardware, but more excuses of why they can deliver their vision or release mind blowing games....
It seems the more and better tools we have and the more powerful technology we have, the lazier we become. (No disrespect to the amount of work that goes into make a video game, it's a lot)
It's a shame that the creative baton is carried by indie developers because when they make a game literally their career and potentially life depends on it, hence they make the game to be as closer as possible to their vision and get it working regardless of system they work with.
@neenja
Yeah, we use AGILE at work, it's a disaster for properly finished products and quality control...the customers always need us to come in with patches and service agreements afterwards...it's a form of gouging at this stage...
”Considering it barely works on base PS4s, running as low as 15 frames-per-second in some instances, it isn’t hard to see why”
Believe me the PS4 Pro can chug pretty badly in places too. It will drop below 20fps every so often in dense NPC/vehicle areas. Usually a sign it’s about to crash.
”CDPR has form here, as The Witcher 3 also suffered numerous issues at launch, but comparatively, those weren’t nearly as bad. “
I remember them as nearly as bad. It did hard crash the console once IIRC, which I remember as being rare because of memory protection etc. The inventory UI required a total overhaul. AI “out of the box” on Witcher 3 was better though.
”publishers are just straight up releasing fully priced games unfinished, an accusation we’d level at Bethesda, EA, and Ubisoft in particular”
Yep. It’s getting out of control to be honest. On one hand games are much more complex now but on the other, so many people want to get into the industry so hiring more testers and actually reading their feedback reports should be just as important.
The fact is, these triple A games are expensive to produce but if handled correctly will make a decent profit. The problem comes from rushing, making employees crunch and then handing the consumer an unfinished product and expecting them to wait around while it’s polished into the finished state it should have been in when it launched.
Gamers are a notoriously hard to please bunch who love to moan, so why would you bring all that bad PR on yourself? Short sighted greed. Poor management and being pressed on by stakeholders will kill companies or at least wound them.
I think that when creators know that there will be a large number of pre orders and first day release buyers, then there can be an element of release it now, fix it later. Expectations aren't helped by the hype train, but I suspect that they are generally too high. For me there are now too many horror stories to pre-order new games, and I always wait for reviews from gaming sites and players. I do approve of the refund policy in the case of CP77 though; fair play.
@NoCode23 yeah right, what do think the reason is they released it in the state they knew it was in? Yeah, millions of preorders. Refunds are not a deterrent either because the amount of people that actually try to get one is tiny. No the blame absolutely is primarily on the behavior of the consumer. If it's been proven over and over that you can get away with anything while making a profit then why would you stop.
@RadioHedgeFund actually it's because they wanted to release it during the holiday season. Yeah.
@tselliot the reason for that is because Nintendo still cares about the quality of their games, plain and simple. It's not a complex situation here, the state of the industry as it now is has for the most part forgotten why people buy a video game in the first place. Not because it's well advertised, and not because it looks pretty. Well actually there's way too many schlubs that DO buy games for those reasons, but they really shouldn't.
@JJ2 as if a game cannot easily be both?
@vict0RGM yeah it's called spreading your resources too thin, which is something CDPR never did until this game.
@deathaxe bankers, WTF? No, even a company like CDPR doesn't need a loan to develop a project, and a movie production company will typically get their money from the movie studio they signed a deal with, if in fact the studio themselves aren't the production company. I know people like to think of CDPR as some mom and pop but they've been very successful for well over a decade.
@bbq_boy yeah ya know there is this universal, worldwide problem, well one of the many problems, of society, in that thanks to the power of mass media advertising people have been taught to believe essentially from birth that a mere business has some sort of authority over how things are done in all the different industries out there, and not only that but everything businesses do is somehow in the interest of the customer. All of that is, of course, absolutely false. Industries only do what the consumer allows them to get away with doing, and all but the smallest minority of businesses, and even business owners, would ever do anything that genuinely benefits the consumer in any way that doesn't also benefit them. Now it may sound like I'm stating the obvious, and I am. Too bad most people don't realize it.
It's because people identify with corporations easier than the people.
@SidNightwalker is the perfect example of this. He says that we should expect this and that it's consumers fault and then goes straight in a Nintendo PR line that doesn't exist in reality. Nintendo cares about quality that's why they started releasing limited time only digital versions of roms and plan to do start doing this regularly.
Almost everyone has a favorite corporation for some reason. It blows the mind honestly.
1. Pushing a game out to appease investors/meet end of financial year targets
2. Entitled gamers who act like babies whenever a game is delayed and embark on public witch hunts on social media. This creates PR pressure on everyone involved.
3. Crunch creating a hostile environment for creatives, resulting in poor work.
4. Unrealistic release windows. Games are more and more complicated and require more time these days.
5. The internet making it easier for unethical publishers to release unfinished code and just update it later to complete it.
6. Pre-order culture.
I cant speak for all big game releases, but id wager that cyberpunk suffered miserably from their staff working from home during the home stretch of the game. Its a nice idea to let everyone sit in their own homes plugging away at their computers, but without in person collaboration and supervision, you get what we see today.
@3MonthBeef the public isn’t understanding. People lambasted Nintendo every time Iwata-dono announced a delay or change and they still complain now. Folks complained when metroid prime 4 development was restarted and they are still pestering platinum games over Bayo 3. Nintendo are just willing to stand their ground and explain to shareholders why they have to delay and ignore public backlash.
@lordzand "Almost everyone has a favorite corporation for some reason. It blows the mind honestly."
I know, it's as if not all big corporations are evil and some actually treat their customers with respect! Hard for you to believe, I'm sure, but a fact is a fact whether or not someone chooses to believe it 😏
@Ryu_Niiyama "Nintendo are just willing to stand their ground and explain to shareholders why they have to delay and ignore public backlash."
Yeah they're a good example of how to stick to the old id Software mantra of "when it's done". I'm sure it's annoying to be a developer and have gamers talk smack about your company because a game they like the look of hasn't released yet, but releasing something buggy and getting more moaning is worse, surely?
@SidNightwalker I certainly don't. Well unless it's Zelda or Mario. A lot of the other ones I allow everyone to "beta test" before I play. Lol
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