CD Projekt Spent Roughly $125 Million Turning Cyberpunk 2077 Around Post-Launch
CD Projekt Spent Roughly $125 Million Turning Cyberpunk 2077 Around Post-Launch
CD Projekt Red spent $125 million on Cyberpunk 2077 post-launch, repairing the game's reputation with the Edgerunners and Update 2.0 patches alongside Phantom Liberty expansion.
CD Projekt announced on October 5 that the expansion starring Idris Elba cost a hefty 275 million Polish Zloty (around $62.7 million) to develop and approximately 95 million Polish Zloty (around $21.6 million) to market.
I'm not saying repairing and adding missing functionality isn't a good size portion of that cost, but calling it a $125 million cost based on the cost of the expansion and marketing which were already planned regardless of how well the initial release did is miss-leading at best.
102Yeah this headline should really just say the ~$41m they actually spent improving the game because that’s still an incredibly impressive number (2/3 the amount of a full expansion). I hate when there’s a good story to tell but they want to make it look even better so they decide to mislead instead of just saying the actually impressive thing
10
surely Edgerunners isn't fair to count toward that? That was already in the works before launch, it's not as though they had a bad launch and thought "wow we should do an animated series to repair reputation"
78I looked up the budget and from what I can see they spent less than 4 million on it so excluding it they still spent a pretty penny.
35That's totally fair, that checks out
12
Pre release I was so hyped for cyberpunk, was patient and waited for reviews, so voted with my wallet and didn't buy it, and just forgot it even existed
Watched Edgerunners animated series off the cuff and it had no business being as good as it was (same as Arcane - gj netflix)
The next time it went on sale I snapped it up and havent regretted it one bit. One playthrough on my old hardware, obligitory playthrough to test after I got an Rtx, and another now 2.0 is out - definitely got my moneys worth
17A lot of the hate was undeserved, IMO. Besides one absolutely hilarious bug where I called my ride in an odd place, and another where part of a mission didn't trigger so I had to reload the last Autosave which was about 30 seconds back, the game ran well for me and a lot of friends at launch. And CDPR responded quickly and had patches out within a week fixing most of the gameplay affecting bugs.
I typically judge games pretty harshly, and my only experience with CDPR prior was Witcher 3, which dropped with some bugs but was patched within a week, and really didn't understand the level of shade CDPR received.
5
I'm pretty sure the article is referring to the 1.6 patch, also called Edgerunners update, which released around the same time as the animated series.
5
Well it must have worked. All I heard for months when it came out was how bad everything about it was, then I finally got it myself and it quickly became one of the top favorite games of my life. Sorry for everyone who had a bad experience because I loved it so much.
64I played it on PC at launch and thoroughly enjoyed it. They've completely redone the skill tree system and reworked a ton of the weapons/clothing/cyber gear. It's different now, but the story and core gameplay are still very much the same. I'm replaying it for the DLC and having a great time.
20I'm in a situation where I don't have money to spend, but I can't wait to play the DLC someday.
1
Thing is, on pc the game was always good to great. It was only a shitshow on the old consoles apparently (don't play on consoles since the N64 days).
1I haven't either since about GameCube era.
1
The game was far from the disaster media made it look like. Ratings on steam are not so bad even at launch for example.
The game had problems on outdated hardware, which was many consoles that I now think these players to be the audience for most video game media.
Most people had no or few problems to play the game, and the game was great right from the start.
-1
The sad part is that this sets the standard (again) that companies can market the hell out of an unfinished game, release it buggy as hell, and still make an amazing profit. This doesn't bode well for the future.
49Well, if you don't buy unfinished games like me, you get to play this amazing game for just $30 on sale.
17Yep, waiting for the next sale to finally grab it.
2
Eh, I dunno about the rest of you, but after 2077 I feel pretty good. Tuned out Starfield and the initial craze and feel...no fomo. I wait for games like BG3 to come out of early access before playing, and only play the games in early access that are actually worth it, like Sons of The Forest, which was pretty decent even at launch (when the fun bugs are still in, and weapons have not been balanced in the slightest!)
I'm hitting the now old classics, Battlefield 1 is excellent, Inscryption is awesome, and the AA and AAA games I do play are quite polished.
If you can count on games just being shitty at launch, you have nothing to worry about. I'll play the last of us in a few years. I played Days Gone recently and loved it. There's enough good games these days to have a packed steam library.
10
Worth it. Money well spent.
18has combat beem rebalanced to be more like the mods now
17I'm not familiar with the mods, but the combat was definitely rebalanced. Enemies scale with your level now, guns themselves were rebalanced, armor is on cyberware instead of clothing, and the new perk trees are more consistently useful instead of some perks being worthless and others being game breaking.
19And Very Hard is still a cake walk :(
They supposedly increased the combat AI, I suppose that only matter to Gear of War style players
3enemies scale? to whag degree? also heres what one mjnute of modded rebalanced combat looks like but yiu should look into more vids to undersyand all the differences https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1qoHZxn664I
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3
How can that be so extremely expensive? I'm sure that money did not go into salaries for the devs, so where did it go?
17headline number is only the equivalent of ~200-300 tech employee salaries for 3 years, less for junior, more for senior, less for designers, marketers, more for Directors, VPs, Execs...
16It's funny that companies think we give a shit how expensive it is for them to operate. Just make something good. That's all that matters
-4
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10Idris Elba doesn't work for free.
Marketing isn't cheap either. Can't rely on word of mouth when that word is "shite". Fixing the code would have been relatively cheap compared to fixing their reputation.
5Lemmy is nonsense. I got down voted for saying marketing lol
1
Into the marketing to tell everyone how it's better now
-1Now that sounds realistic.
1
Probably could have spent less if it was given more time to bake, glad they invested it though 2.0 really brought the game closer to where it needed to be. Still not what was promised back in 2018, but it's playable and enjoyable enough now.
5I’m still not gonna buy it though.
1They did a pretty good job fixing it up... but it also took like 4-5 years. Some things I'm like "it took at least 5 years for you to think of implementing this??"
Edit: 5 years meaning it should have been added during the initial development.
-25 years? Mon frere it came out December of 2020.
55 years meaning "from the start of development". A lot of these things should have been there from the beginning.
0
$125 million and the game still sucks. I beat it at launch and I can't even tell where they spent all that money. Hotdog textures must be expensive.
-6So yeah, it was just people saying BS at the release, the game was perfect, like the CEO said few weeks ago in an itv.
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