Sony Removes Cyberpunk 2077 from PlayStation Store, Offers Full Refund - News

Imagine how Mike Pondsmith and Keanu Reeves must feel having their names attached to this project that receives constant bad publicity. CDPR will get through this for sure, but lessons will be learned, and they won’t possibly allow themselves to repeat such a blunder.
I’m lucky I don’t have to experience the base consoles version. But I still applied for the refund. I have plenty of games to play other than Cyberpunk 2077, and I prefer playing it when all of this shit show will finally be over and the game will perform and run as initially intended. So many people and outlet keep talking about how much of a mess the game is, and while I haven’t had any major issues (3 or 4 crashes and occasional yet mild glitches), the worries that it might take a nose dive down the line prevents me from fully enjoying the experience.

So I’ll get refunded, wait, and get it again once the game is completely as it’s supposed to be.

Just expect even more crunch to allow it to return to the store.

This is why it doesnt pay to just rush things. They should have taken another 6months or so before releaseing instead. If this was more polished, and ran better on base consoles, down the line, I think the sales would have made up for it.

They absolutely should have let the game cook a good bit longer. Even on 9th gen hardware it's full of bugs. It runs okay, but tons of weird crap still happens. It feels like an Early Access game.

But, companies have financial pressures to get things out quickly. it's a gamble, for sure. It looks like on this one cdpr lost. I think these things have to happen once in awhile though, for management and investors to have a reminder that you can lose a ton of money when you do dumb shit like this.

This is obviously going to hurt sales of this game significantly. But, think about the value of the reputational damage. Cdpr was among the most beloved developers on planet earth. They've squandered most of that goodwill. I would think that damage is valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. I don't think it's possible to get the reputation completely restored until they release another game that is in a near perfect state. So, we might be talking about a decade to get back to the point they were at a couple of weeks ago.

And to tie it back into my original comment, employee morale has a monetary value as well. Crushing that does serious financial harm to the company. And there is no way in hell that they are not dealing with a morale disaster right now.

Not really, you can buy physical edition if you want, besides being on PC.

Yeah, seems extreme to delist it entirely. Why not put a giant red disclaimer on the PS Store page telling people that the game doesn't run well on base PS4, that they should only buy if they have a PS5.

@shikamaru317 - Having seen some framerate videos the game runs pretty well on PS4 Pro. The performance is acceptable on hardware that isn't a base console. Now the game is buggy beyond that as well, but let users have the option to buy it if they want.

Just give people some sort of warning like a beta tends to have. At that point, refunds shouldn't be necessary.

It isn't a PS5 game, it is a PS4 game and can be played by BC so it would be a workaround that let's say CDPR doesn't really deserve.
People would still be asking refunds anyway.

A PS5 version doesn't exist...

I’m 26 hours in on Xbox Series X currently. So far I have only encountered minor bugs, nothing too out of the ordinary for a AAA game on release these days, though I’ve heard of others on Series X encountering a few more serious bugs like missions that need to be restarted because they bug out. Graphics wise, it has quality and performance modes, quality is a pretty solidly locked 30 FPS, while performance is 60 FPS with drops. I prefer quality mode, 30 FPS with motion blur is good enough for singleplayer, and the graphical improvements on quality mode are noticeable. Overall I’m really enjoying it so far.

What he said. Pretty much mirrors my experience too, played a few hours more too.

I'm playing on Series X. It runs fine, but it is still a very buggy game. No problem playing it, but it is not in proper shape for wide release, IMO. .

From Digital Foundry it plays fine enough, it isn't a next gen version, but the 30fps mode is smooth enough while being good looking and the 60fps although having some severe drops isn't a big issue. There are bugs, textures loading is problematic, and even some crashes, but is playable.

Seem to be the best version , i see less complaining about this version than the pc version

GoG doesn't need refunds. The PC version of the game is fine.. Yeah it is a buggy but nothing outside of the norm for massive open world games. I have about 50 hours into my character on PC and about 20 hours into another character from my free stadia version and have had zero game crashes and minor graphical issues

Yup, I think the vendor (Sony store) may be liable for transaction costs when there is refunds like this, and even if CDPR says they will cover that for Sony, it will be a mess regardless. Sony has never pubilcally sold "Betas" so why should they start now for CDPR who acknowledges the console version is not viable. I mean, "standards" fro games aren't necessarily always maximally upheld, but in this casd the dev is themselves saying the game does not fulfill even most minimal of standards.

billyboy if they don't give refunds on their own store (and yes there is bugs and broken promises for the PC version as well, besides does it work fine in all PC configurations that met at least the minimum recommended? Seems like it doesn't) then they promising refunds in third party stores without even contacting them to make a deal is another lie from CDPR that just made a shitty apologetic letter.

Because if a product is defective at the moment you buy you are entitled to a refund and not be demanded to wait for a solution. Waiting for a solution is your option not obligation. If the game would be working by February than launch at February. And this is after a series of lies including the game running fine on base consoles, being gold on February 2020 for PC and just smoothing things out on consoles, that day one patch make it looks like a new game, etc. So I wouldn't really trust their promise that the game will be working good by February 2021.

To give people the choice? Are you actually asking why give people their money back when it MAY be fixed MONTHS from now?

Watch all these people run back to the store and buy it once it's patched. All the youtubers will be saying how much better the game is, game news sites will report on the game post patch and give credit to cdproject, and people will flock back to the game.

Sony just can't do anything right by you can they.

That response is ignorant. I'm simply saying give users some sort of warning and let them make the choice if they want to buy it. Also, the game is going to be fixed/improved eventually so people may be willing to tolerate its current state knowing updates will come. Hypothetically, if you own the PS5 Digital buying a physical copy isn't even an option.

CDPR was wrong for releasing it in this state with no warning. But I don't like Sony's solution of taking away the digital option. In fact, this is an example of what's wrong with digital media.

Sony giving refunds is great, but removing it I don't support.

People don't read warning labels. Refunds cost money, there likely would still be many refund requests from new buyers after the label warning came up.

No they shouldn't. Everyone knows games can have major issues at launch and still buy them, people have the warning that once you buy it is final and if you download you can't refund, people have the EULA for not sharing accounts.... they ignore all this, buy and then complain. So the only containment action really effective is stop the selling until the supplier can truly correct the problem. You want a waiver for a company that intentionally lied to customers and partners.

I think it's clearly on management, everybody else could have seen the problems but management told them just keep on steaming ahead regardless in order to release it on time, and wouldn't even pull the console release until it was ready. I think they were rationalizing it just needed some settings tweaks that they could manage by release date, but it clearly was more than that. This isn't even getting to the main game which seems buggy as hell even aside from basic performance problems, but the thing is too many people don't care about that. I don't really understand why people feel the need to play this game IMMEDIATELY when they would get all around better experience if they waited 9months to 1 year and even wait for price drop. Like, you can just play some other game is good that you never got around to buying/playing before.

To add to what mutantsushi explained very well. CDPR even admitted the game failed the certification process but promised it would be totally fine by launch to MS and Sony (seems like this is a common practice by AAA devs as this process is done long before going gold and we know that even after going gold most games have a hefty day one patch) but didn't fulfilled it. So it is totally on management.

And yet they will still have "fans" defend this and denounce pulling the game. There is just a culture of worshipping the latest and greatest, while ignoring or rejecting that they comply with objective standards. How is this a professional industry if they can't do that? The devs need to unionize to stop the abuse AND ensure compliance with objective industry standards. Any other engineering profession can do that, yet software engineering flies by the seat of it's pants breathing pure hype. And relies on the latest high spec PC to save it's ass by brute force.

I'm against mandatory union and fellowships, etc. But yes free of choice make a union to stand together and denounce bad practices is positive.