1) Introduction.
Cyberpunk 2077 was a highly anticipated video game that was meant to tackle the cyberpunk genre and relied heavily on the idea of gender inclusivity in their PR. This makes it a worthy research object as it is one of few video games made by a large company with lots of resources that has truly attempted to step into inclusivity and progressiveness. Unfortunately,
Cyberpunk 2077 has also faced a large amount of criticism and was considered an absolute failure of a launch title, to the point where it was recalled. This paper will be addressing first what exactly Cyberpunk is and what it meant to accomplish along with the many factors that made it such a highly anticipated release. This paper will then continue to address how this ultimately ended up hurting the release by discussing its failures and the consequences to the company following their botched release.
2) Description and Context.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a video game of the action role-playing game genre made by CD
Projekt Red. Cyberpunk 2077 released December 10th, 2020 for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5,
Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Google Stadia and for Microsoft Windows. The game places the player into Night City, “a megalopolis obsessed with power, glamour and body modification.” The player steps into the role of V, a mercenary trying to obtain a one-of-a-kind implant that will grant them eternal life. To get it, the player will have to hone their skills and fight off enemies ranging from police to security to street thugs in the name of their prize
(“Cyberpunk 2077”). Customization is the game’s focus point, with the appearance of V being heavily customizable—their gender, appearance, abilities, and modifications are all customizable. Player agency is very important to CD Projekt Red in this game, as they attempted to be inclusive with character customization options, both in character creation and in options for playstyles
(“Cyberpunk 2077”). The actual character creation, wherein the player decides what V looks like, does not just limit the player to the choice of playing male or female in the traditional sense, allowing them to change their character’s voice and even genitals—something that CD Projekt
Red has taken pride in—regardless of the character “body type.” In fact, the option to modify a character’s “hardware” was important enough to CD Projekt Red that even IGN—which is an
American video game and entertainment media website—has reported on it (“Cyberpunk 2077
Will Let You Customize Your Genitals - IGN Now”).
Noteworthy however is that V is still either male or female. There is no option in game to be nonbinary or genderfluid in the sense of the character will always use masculine or feminine pronouns. Interestingly, the option for what determines V’s gender in game is not their body type nor their genitalia—in fact, you have the option of giving V no genitalia at all—but is instead tied to the voice you give the character. Should you give V the “masculine” voice, then he will use he/him pronouns, with V instead using “she/her” pronouns if you choose to give V the
“feminine” voice.
It is also noteworthy that, while CD Projekt Red has tried to put their focus on V’s flexibility or fluidity in their identity, all the actual advertisements for the game depict V using the basic preset for the “masculine” design, including both the masculine body type and the masculine voice. This is seen not only in the few bits of his appearance we are given in these advertisements or by his voice, but by that you can also hear V being referred to using he/him pronouns in the trailers for the game, both in the lines “he’s dying” and when V is referred to as
“Mr. Nobody” (“Cyberpunk 2077 — Official Launch Trailer — V”).
Cyberpunk 2077 was one of the most highly anticipated games in the gaming community during 2020, largely due to its constant delays to “polish” the game as well as just how long of a development time it had. That said, the amount of delays production went through was reaching unprecedented levels. To give some context, production of Cyberpunk 2077 was announced back in 2012, with a teaser trailer for the game being released in 2013. However, the project fell into silence in the following years, only being announced again in 2018. The game continued to gain traction at that point with more information coming through 2019, slowly building up hype for
CD Projekt Red’s “masterpiece” (Bergin).
However, this hype was followed by consistent delays at every corner, with the release date for the game continually being pushed back enough times where it had actually become a meme among the gaming community. One of the most consistent memes regarding Cyberpunk
2077’s delays was the idea that the game would not actually be released until the year 2077. Not only was the constant delays of Cyberpunk 2077 becoming the focal point of consistent memes, but it was actually beginning to get a very similar attitude towards its release as Kingdom Hearts
3. The gaming community was starting to reach the point of “I’ll believe it when I see it,” not truly expecting the game to ever be released.
There was more behind the hype for the game than just the constant memes regarding its release or regarding the actual gameplay or setting, however. There was also the addition of
Matrix and John Wick star Keanu Reeves, who is playing “Johnny Silverhand” in the game.
Keanu Reeves is a cultural icon known for his “wholesomeness” online, as seen especially in his famous line “You’re breathtaking!” towards a loving fan, but also for his immensely popular role as John Wick. Keanu Reeves is of course known for several other roles such as Neo and Johnny
Mnemonic. With such a beloved and well received action star joining the project, the future looked bright for Cyberpunk 2077 and the gaming community was waiting with bated breath and high expectations. After its constant delays and continual hype buildup, much of the gaming community was starving to get their hands on the game when it finally released at the end of
2020.
Thanks to all of its memes and delays, however, Cyberpunk 2077 had a new issue. The gaming community had been waiting for so long, meming so consistently, and waiting with so much anticipation that the game now had very large shoes to fill. With years of delays in the name of polishing the game and making sure it was “perfect,” CD Projekt Red had established in the minds of the gaming community that Cyberpunk 2077 was therefore going to be “perfect” and would accept nothing less than absolute perfection from the game. There had become a precedent and an expectation for perfection, leading to a “holier than thou” attitude towards the game for when it was finally released.
Unfortunately, what finally came to consoles worldwide was much less than perfection.
The game was rife with glitches and errors, such as the consistent visual glitches upon release of replaced or missing textures, genitals appearing through clothing or having clothing just plain vanish without reason. In fact, the “penis appearing through pants” became yet another meme of the game. It wasn’t just the visual glitches that marred the release, however, for the game also had bugs with the AI. Tanks would fall out of the sky, the NPC AIs would glitch and not perform the tasks they were meant to. With the heavy expectations of absolute perfection that had been placed upon the game both by the developers own PR and the gaming community, these glitches caused the release to fail spectacularly and to become an established dumpster fire.
It is worth noting that such glitches and bugs are also incredibly prevalent in modern game releases. In fact, the “day 1 patch” is an infamous tool that nearly all big game developers use for releases for the past several years. These problems with Cyberpunk 2077 are not new or even normally unexpected. The gaming community is very aware of the fact that most games will need a day 1 patch and a variety of other patches throughout the coming months after the release of a game to fix any errors that weren’t addressed in development. The problem comes from that CD Projekt Red had been consistently delaying the release of this game for years, furthering the development to “get it right.” This meant that when the game wasn’t perfect on release, the gaming community had felt betrayed and that they had been lied to. CD Projekt
Red’s insistence that Cyberpunk 2077 was being refined and perfected led to their disastrous release and the loss of good faith from the gaming community.
The sense of betrayal was so strong in the gaming community that Sony and Microsoft— owners and developers of the PlayStation and Xbox consoles—were flooded with countless requests for refunds. All hope had been lost in the production and the gaming community wasn’t anxious for the coming patches to fix the game, instead demanding their money back for wasting their time with a dumpster fire of a game. This was eventually granted, with the platforms hosting Cyberpunk 2077 offering full refunds to all players ignoring their usual limitations on playtimes (Mike and Browning). In fact, the backlash against Cyberpunk 2077 was so strong that several platforms, including Sony, pulled the title from their stores, making it no longer accessible digitally. The only way to obtain a copy of Cyberpunk 2077 on the PlayStation 4 or
PlayStation 5 would now be to track down a physical copy of the game (Brown). CD Projekt Red’s woes following the disastrous release of their most heavily anticipated game did not end there, however, for the backlash was still coming at them in waves. CD Projekt
Red faces heavy criticism from not only the gaming community, but journalists as well, in addition to heavy lawsuits from their investors. The company is facing criticisms and accusations for forcing their developers and workers to face unreasonable crunch time to finish production of the game, and, as one anonymous employee had reported, “The owners treat the company as a machine to earn money, and do not see employees as people but more like data in the table,” creating further backlash against their business practices. In addition, CD Projekt Red is also facing criticism for using non-disclosure agreements with journalists, allegedly forcing them to report inaccurately on known shortcomings of Cyberpunk 2077 before its official release (Mike and Browning; Newman; Rupport).
These criticisms are actually directly tied to the lawsuits that CD Projekt Red is now facing from their investors. The lawsuit would claim that the developers had "failed to disclose
(1) Cyberpunk 2077 was virtually unplayable on the [last-] generation Xbox or PlayStation systems due to an enormous number of bugs; (2) as a result, Sony would remove Cyberpunk
2077 from the PlayStation store, and Sony, Microsoft and CD Projekt would be forced to offer full refunds for the game; (3) consequently, CD Projekt would suffer reputational and pecuniary harm; and (4) as a result, defendants’ statements about its business, operations, and prospects, were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages." CD
Projekt Red has therefore been attempting to “defend themselves” from said lawsuits while also trying to “rectify” their initial mistakes with a variety of patches to improve the game’s performance on older consoles (Guisao). Their myriad of issues hadn’t ended there however, as very recently CD Projekt Red had a brand-new problem to face: hackers. As of February 9th, or the day of writing this paper, CD
Projekt Red revealed that they had been the victim of a ransomware attack. They have announced their refusal to give into demands, stating with certainty that they were in control of the situation and that there would be no serious harm done. In the attack a note was left behind, claiming that CD Projekt Red had been “epically pwned” and that they had stolen not only source code for some of their most popular games, including the Witcher 3, but that they had also stolen “documents relating to accounting, administration, HR, investor relations and more!”
It was also mentioned that they would sell this information and lead documents to their “contacts in gaming journalism” if they could not reach an agreement with CD Projekt Red, causing their
“public image to go down the shitter even more” and for investors to lose trust in their company—this last part ironically having been done without their help based upon the lawsuits that CD Projekt Red is facing. Months after the disaster that was the release of Cyberpunk 2077,
CD Projekt Red’s troubles over the backlash are still far from over (Newman;
@CDPROJEKTRED).
3) Initial Conclusions.
In my research for the surrounding controversies involving Cyberpunk 2077, I noticed something odd. Most of CD Projekt Red’s problems had little to do with my actual project. In fact, most of their woes appeared to come from unkept promises, poor decision making or overzealous promises, and from a myriad of glitches and bugs common in all big company video game releases of its era. I was a little surprised to find that many of the criticisms the game faced had little to do with inclusivity or even in how well it succeeded in its narrative. Instead, the game appeared to have just been mostly unplayable for many players, something which as of beginning my own research has been slowly getting fixed with all the game’s patches. This means much of what I have researched for this paper will likely be scrapped for this project as it is ultimately not relevant to what I am looking at for this game. The game’s backlash stemmed from entirely different sources.
Perhaps contradictorily, I believe this further is further indication of why Cyberpunk
2077 remains a worthy research object. With all its problems and all the criticisms it has faced: there is very little discussion regarding the progressive ideals that CD Projekt Red was trying to establish in the gaming community. For being a game that tried to sell itself on its gender fluidity, it’s success or failure at doing so isn’t delved into by critics, as they instead focus on the glaring issues of functionality of the game. While this does of course grant me little insight into how well the game actually succeeds at its goals or how well it answers my research questions, it still proves itself to be worthy of analysis.
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