Few launches in modern gaming history have imploded as spectacularly as Cyberpunk 2077’s. When CD Projekt Red’s neon-soaked RPG finally arrived in December 2020, players were greeted by a plague of bugs, rough performance across platforms, and save files that could corrupt with unsettling ease — hardly the triumphant release the studio behind The Witcher 3 had promised. The mess got so bad that Sony briefly pulled the game from the PlayStation Store entirely. In the nearly six years since, Cyberpunk 2077 has clawed its way through a genuine redemption arc — one that CD Projekt Red itself says still isn’t fully finished. Now, joint CEO Michał Nowakowski has revisited the question of why the game shipped when it did, and his answer is turning heads.
The CEO’s Version: The Team Wanted It Released
According to Nowakowski, the push to get Cyberpunk 2077 out the door came from within the development team itself — the devs, he claims, wanted the game released. It’s a framing that conveniently pushes back against years of whispers that investors and shareholders were leaning on the Polish studio to stop delaying the game and finally start earning back their patience. It’s worth remembering that Cyberpunk 2077 slipped multiple times before release, sliding from April 2020 to September, then November, before ultimately landing in December. Each delay chipped away at the company’s share price and tested the nerves of everyone with money riding on Night City.
The Mandatory Crunch Elephant in the Room
Here’s where the CEO’s account gets a little wobbly. In the final stretch before launch, reports surfaced — most notably from Bloomberg — that CD Projekt Red had imposed mandatory crunch on its staff, including obligatory six-day work weeks, to hit the December release date. “Mandatory” is the operative word. A studio executive suggesting his exhausted developers simply “wanted it out the door” sits awkwardly next to reporting that those same developers were compelled to work overtime whether they liked it or not. Crunch is rarely a bottom-up desire — it’s usually the symptom of a ship date that cannot move again, regardless of what the people actually building the game want. Whatever the true chain of command behind that launch, it clearly cost the team plenty of sleep.
From Infamy to One of Gaming’s Great Comebacks
Whatever the truth about the 2020 decision, there’s no denying what came after. CD Projekt Red spent years patching Cyberpunk 2077 into shape, and the results speak for themselves. The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime reignited public fascination with the setting in 2022, and the Phantom Liberty expansion — paired with the transformative Update 2.0 — turned the game into what many now consider one of the finest open-world RPGs of the generation. The fact that the studio openly admits its redemption arc still needs finishing says a lot about just how much damage that original launch caused.
Ready to Give Night City a Second Chance?
If the chaos of 2020 scared you away, there has genuinely never been a better time to visit Night City. You can grab Cyberpunk 2077 game keys, the Phantom Liberty expansion, and Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation gift cards at wallet-friendly prices over at TURGAME.com — and see for yourself why players are finally falling in love with the game CD Projekt Red nearly sank.
Source: Rock Paper Shotgun
Source: Rock Paper Shotgun