Cyberpunk 2077’s troubled launch ‘costs CD Projekt founders $1 billion’

Cyberpunk 2077’s troubled launch has reportedly wiped over $1 billion off the wealth of the company’s founders.

The highly anticipated game released on December 10 following three delays. While the PC version was largely well received in spite of numerous bugs, the game’s performance on consoles has been heavily criticised by fans and the media.

CD Projekt pledged to improve the overall experience via future updates, but also said customers not wanting to keep the game could opt for a refund – something it would help them with if they were having difficulties getting one, which many consumers are.

The technical issues and negative reception have resulted in CD Projekt shares dropping by over a third following the game’s release, with its founders’ 34% stake valued at about $3 billion on Tuesday, Bloomberg reports.

The average 12-month Cyberpunk 2077 sales forecast of nine analysts surveyed by the publication also dropped from 30 million copies pre-release to 25.6 million units this week.

CD Projekt announced on December 10 that Cyberpunk 2077 had sold eight million copies via pre-orders alone – more than enough to cover the game’s development costs, as well as marketing and promotional expenses “either already incurred or anticipated for the remainder of 2020”, it said.

In VGC’s Cyberpunk 2077 review, which was based on our time with the PC version of the game, our critic called it “a stunning achievement, if you can overlook the glitches”.

Further reading

Q&A: CD Projekt on how it’s fixing Cyberpunk 2077

Full transcript of CD Projekt’s emergency web call covers last-gen, future plans and more

We’ll be publishing a review based purely on the last-gen console experience in the coming days.