I would agree with
@exxxed in that the game was not released in an Early Access state, despite the shortcomings on finished vs unfinished content (still debatable and impossible to prove as in my opinion they cleverly hid those with vague commentary/clever marketing), and the unfounded (misleading..?) claims of it running "surprisingly well" on consoles (which is the basis of the class action lawsuit in the making, not for consumers as much as for misled investors - this is a very serious accusation, even by removing the "consumer satisfaction" factor).
However the intent of the developer can be put to question if one realizes that the game could have been released as an Early Access in early 2020 or even 2019. Provided effective QA was used, they should have been able to project correctly the timeline and expected outcome at some point, if not in 2018 or earlier. Which they didn't (?). So my personal
educated guess is that:
1) they chose to gamble by keeping it as a "timely" release and put the pressure on devs to keep doing crunch hours when the management realized it was broken and they were close to breaching all their contracts with partners;
2) they avoided the Early Access (life-)path to maximize profit by using the anticipation, momentum, timing (Christmas sales) and the hype (they cleverly never dispelled this, even when it led to incorrect assumptions/statements) to their advantage, hoping that the finished content (whatever that would be in Dec 2020) would be enough to keep refunds at a minimum (which it did) and avoid as much backlash as possible from partners (although they were furious when the refunds were offered without consulting them, ie Sony).
All in all I would say a very successful gamble so far, with minimal backlash, and with a very big part of the gaming community defending the game at least in these forums - which is funny, as I see it, because the game itself is not the issue, instead the way it was delivered and how the company reacted towards media and consumers seems more of an issue to me than the game, which I enjoy.
So, while I personally enjoy the game, I feel let down by how CDPR conducted business and how it used the people's hype (it had previously bred) to keep pressure on devs and mask the failure that was the QA management. And no, they will never let you or me or anyone know how much content was "cut" (if any) before release, because they didn't have time to complete it. So let's just leave that aside - it is also true for any other company out there, so it is to be expected.
So, to conclude, in my eyes
CDPR is welcoming itself to the pantheon of mega-corp culture. I suppose we will soon see corpo junk-slang such us "our DNA" and "our brand" sliding in the official slides to investors (or internal corpo memos that try to boost worker confidence and feeling of belonging
). Managers and investors really like feeling like they belong somewhere (even when they are clueless about the product and what workers expect... pfff).
Hmmm, seems like I got all-Johnny lately - must be the corpo shit I endure where I work...
Note:
Yeah, I do believe that it is crystal clear we are now for them consumers, not gamers - investors and the polish govt. and whoever else put money here don't care one bit how much we love our RPGs, they just want proven financials and maximized profit - so, I understand that they are an emerging mega-corp, I try not to get confused with the"friendly" comments, this is just clever PR. Anyone working in customer relations or corporate image-making can understand how that language tries to sound like and what it tries to mask. Up to now it seems to work wonders.