Why would you crash like this and give us such an unfinished state of the amazing game, even with your rep at stake or not, why? Seriously why throw an unfinished game at people?
I'm not gonna go about and claim a bunch of features that are in other games and not in yours.
Just focusing on what it IS and what it HAS, its all buggy all over the place, with many concurrent bugs, from many of your most characteristic features.
So, I've got to ask you, why release it like this?
I would with no doubt have a greater experience with your game if you at least finished working on what it already has. Surely people would complain about other things, but so much for such an honorable rep you built for yourself, its gone now. Was it worth it?
I wonder how CDPR devs and employees feel about this gigantic crash landing?
TL;DR: money
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It's definitely not in the best state, but its really far from "disappointment", "unplayable" or just insert your own word. I know there are some glitches and bugs, but you have to understand - in open world games its normal. Every big open world game is buggy, and sooner or later they are fixed (or not, Anthem and Fallout 76). Same happened to Witcher 3 or GTA V. Even with poor optimization on base consoles (PS4 and Xbox One). These games weren't that bad, yes, but still bad experience and I don't remember backlash after Witcher, GTA V and their performance issues or bug problems when it was released.
So if we ignore all of this, why we have more buggy game than others I mentioned? Too many systems and not enough time to proper test everything. Its sad, but I guess its true. They clearly had to release game in this state because of money issues, its always money issues. Game was really expensive (we don't have exact numbers, but estimated cost was 110-314mil $ with marketing, one Polish analysts estimated 314mil$, but we don't know yet), I guess we are not very far from real numbers, it will be something in between.
Now look at time how long they are making this game - They started right after Blood and Wine was released (source:
E3 2018: Cyberpunk 2077 Trailer Message Discusses Release Date, Free DLC, No DRM - IGN ) and also they had to rework their engine. Paying 120-314mil$ for 4 years is super expensive. For example GTA V was in development 3-4 years on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 (Next gen and PC release was 1 and 2 years later), two platforms (Cyberpunk was released on 9 platforms) and development cost was 260mil$. By the way... on GTA V worked twice as many people and it's 2nd best selling game of all time.
So 30-79mil$ every year in average, and now sit down - Witcher 3 development cost was ONLY 34mil$, Horizon: Zero Dawn cost was 47mil$. One year of development of Cyberpunk 2077 was more expensive than whole Witcher 3 development (three and a half years). That's a lot of money for company which is still "indie" developer (by definition indie) without big publisher behind them.
They just ran out of money, another year of delay is very expensive. People are cancelling orders if you delay, marketing have to start again, employers have to be paid. All this cost money and sometimes you have to just.. release the game and hope it will not be that bad. After you get money, you can continue with development. Not everyone is Microsoft which can delay the game for a year (Halo Infinite).
