so the investors were just after a quick payoff then. Sounds about right. I wonder why they didn't pursue the case and get a lot more money. Seems this was not about teaching cdpr a lesson but cash for cash hungry investors. A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest
Sometimes it can also simply be much more cost effective to settle than to debate. Courts take time and can eat up the possible amount of saved money in time and fees easily. Without knowing the exact details of both sides it's pure speculation and pesonally I wouldn't dare to blame either side for anything definitive.
The settlement did not admit guilt.
As to why, there are a couple of reasons, and I don't know which is true. Either, they thought they'd win but the legal fees from winning would exceed a settlement cost. Or, they thought that they might lose, and a settlement cut the dual expense of paying the attorneys and paying the judgment.
Given how cheap the settlement was, I'm inclined to think that the first was the determining factor. In fact, I'm shocked at how cheap the settlement was. Their attorneys must be pretty good.
As to why, there are a couple of reasons, and I don't know which is true. Either, they thought they'd win but the legal fees from winning would exceed a settlement cost. Or, they thought that they might lose, and a settlement cut the dual expense of paying the attorneys and paying the judgment.
Given how cheap the settlement was, I'm inclined to think that the first was the determining factor. In fact, I'm shocked at how cheap the settlement was. Their attorneys must be pretty good.
I don't think anyone with a clear mind or without the blind fan devotion can honestly say CDPR was totally innocent. Besides none of that matters. Opinions and court are two different animals. The class action, depending on the case they built, might be going for an easy point to prove, and CDPR might have no defense against it. We don't know, we don't have access to the courts records or the class action stratergy, AFAIK. However, legal cases can shift on a dime, and it can be a gamble 50/50 if you win or lose. So given CDPR, it was probably best to just settle and leave it at that.I've searched the forum, but I didn't find any information about CDPR that settle in court for about 1 million dollar.
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I wonder why they did it.
They could fight the case, and beat it in court. They could prove their innocence.....
But they settle instead!
[...]
They settle guys. they admit they was guilty.
Let me know your opinion
Oh, and settling isn't an admittance of guilt. It is a legal option that two or more parties can agree to. aka, We can either spend months or years debating this, and both lose or we can agree to settle the dispute out of court.
I'll add some clarification to my initial post.I've searched the forum, but I didn't find any information about CDPR that settle in court for about 1 million dollar.
Article 1
Article 2
I wonder why they did it.
They could fight the case, and beat it in court. They could prove their innocence.....
But they settle instead!
[...]
They settle guys. they admit they was guilty.
Let me know your opinion
I know that settle in court is not accepting guilt generally speaking, at least for civil case.
On criminal case howether, or You get your charges dropped by the prosecution, or you have to plea guilty to your crimes to "settle" in a way.
But, as anticipated in the main post, I think we should look at the context.
This is not a simple situation where someone sue someone else, and they need to find a solution.
The situation is a company who allegedly lied to his costumer (us) and to their investors, to make money.
Remember that they also receive funds from the Polish government (AKA Polish people) for this project.
CDPR integrity and reputation is on the line for this.
So I think that taking "the easy way out", even if it generally wise, it's not applicable here.
If CDPR really wanted to clean they reputation in the eyes of customers, investors and the press, they needed to fight in court and win the case.
If you see to the "history" of this project, It's clear they choose this "easy way" a lot of times, not actually trying to regain trust, but to just maximize profit with less damage.
Some example:
1. Marketing lies in trailers and media: they never respond to this. They just ignore the situation.
Even the famous "work in progress" thing, It's from the community. As far as i know, they never use is as official excuse.
2. Poor performance of PC and console: they just make 1 line statement: hey, in our testing was fine.
And after 1 year the situation in not changed.
3. General partecipation with the customer/community and official statement: again, I don't see trasparency here.
Very few updates to the situation, a pair of embarassing roadmaps, and that's it.
How can you don't care if your consumer want answer?
So, to wrap up, I think that the court case was a good way for CDRP to defend or proove theyr "innocence" to the world.
They just choose to take the easy way, and remain with their reputation "dirty".
If you ask me, they really looks like a certain Corporation you can find in their game.
At least one thing was done right, I guess.
Naturally, you are entitled to your opinion, but the legal matters have already been discussed and as for the context:
First of all, as to my knowledge in no official statement CDPR lied regarding Cyberpunk 2077. The infamous "it runs surprisingly well on consoles" quotes only says that it runs better than they expected, which can be true. Of course, it raises the expectations of people and might be misleading, but it is not lie.
Furthermore, it doesn't seem like the court case is discussed that much anywhere. Sure, it was mentioned on various (gaming related) news outlets, but this isn't the topic where CDPR's integrity is on the line. The most important thing for CDPR is 1.5, for you it might have been the court case, but that's not the general take on this.
Legally speaking, taking the easy way out is often a good idea and even if you are innocent you have to think about what will happen if you lose. Would CDPR gain that much from winning the case? As argued above, probably not. However, CDPR would have taken another beat had the lost the case, they would have had to pay more money which might have hurt the company. You must not forget that CDPR's leadership also have to take job security of their 1,111 (2019) employees into account.
Cyberpunk 2077 itself as a project was not the easy way out. Going against the current trend and making a game with a heavy single player and story focus was not the easy way out. Not including any kind of games as a service functionality was not the easy way out. They rushed the release, there is no point in arguing about that, but they most definitely are not prone to take the easy way out.
I don't know, often things are changed/removed during development. This was the case for Witcher and other games as well. In interviews, it became obvious fairly quickly that the game is not GTA in the future. (As a CDPR fan this was about to be expected.)
Yeah, console performance sucked, Cyberpunk 2077 should have never been released on old-gen. The console performance of the release version was also mistake made by CDPR. On the other hand, the PC version runs fine, it truly is. I didn't see any reviewer complaining about. Steve from GamersNexus only mentioned that the performance is not consistent, but this also changed over the coming months.
It seems people like to throw the poorly-optimised phrase around way too much, just because they are able to run a corridor shooter with excellent graphics surprisingly well on their machine. Given the visuals the game provides it runs well. Naturally, there is always room for improvements but I wouldn't say the PC version was poorly optimised. (It was buggy in other areas though.)
With this, I have also my gripes. I think currently they feel like they community would lash out at them no matter what they would say. Thus, they have decided to say as little as possible, which is a stark contrast to their pre-release chatter. Personally, I'm also annoyed by the lack of transparency though.
Again, you are entitled to your opinion but fighting a court in battle you might lose - and you might lose any court case - is not a very good idea, because there are repercussions to losing a court case. Releasing a good 1.5 version is much more important and thus the studio profits more from not spending any more time with this court case. I would even argue that by getting the case dropped now, CDPR has gained more than if they had continued with this case and won.
Also, have a look a the current Steam charts, it seems like Cyberpunk 2077 already is regarded more positively and it also won a Steam Award. Thus, one can argue the their reputation is clearly on the rise and apparently they did the right thing(s) after the release of Cyberpunk 2077.
Finally, don't forget that CDPR's management is responsible for a lot more than us gamers, they also have employees and investors. Aligning with these different - often opposing - groups is rather difficult and as mentioned previously in this thread, there was no way for CDPR to not piss of their investors in December of 2020.
The primary legal responsibility of a company is to act in the interests of its shareholders. Wasting company time and money fighting frivolous lawsuits to the death that could otherwise be resolved usually does not fit with that. There would have to be a huge reputational issue for it to do that, and upsetting a few people on internet forums is not such a risk.
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No. This isn't Hollywood. Out in the real world, companies settle all the time. Innocent or guilty. This line of thinking of "they settle, they guilty" needs to disappear.
Civil or criminal, settling is never an admittance of guilt and should never be considered so unless expressively stated in the arrangement. Period. There is no variation to this.
You don't seem to understand what the case is truly about. It's not about us. It's not about the Polish government. It's about misleading investors in order to obtain financial benefits from these same investors. In other words, fraud.
You're letting your obvious bias about the game taint your view and making it about the wrong things.
Public companies don't fight legal battles just on the principle of proving their innocence. They just don't. It's just plain stupid and goes directly against what their duties are. Especially so if it's something they can end quickly. As @northwold indicated, the reputational hit would have to be so massive as to be actually dangerous to the company's longevity for any company to fight a legal battle on principle. An angry bunch on an internet forum will never qualify as a massive reputational issue. Fighting a legal battle to appease that bunch would be beyond stupid.
Furthermore, it wouldn't even have any effect. The simple truth is that once the public has made up it's mind about a heavily publicized case, the vast majority wouldn't change it's mind if the verdict goes against their belief. Had CDPR won, you can bet the majority of the angry bunch would've remained angry and claimed it's a bullshit verdict. In fact, based on your own posts, I'm pretty certain it wouldn't have changed your mind about their guilt.
Additionally, and @northwold already touched on that previously, this was a lawyer led lawsuit. This is ambulance chasing level of bullshit. I'm not seeing investors out to make a quick buck here. I'm seeing lawyers out to make a quick buck. They saw an opportunity to do so and managed to rile up investors enough that one decide to step forward and be the lead plaintiff. My leading theory is that the investors got wrapped up in this and once they realized what awaited them (a protracted and onerous legal battle with no clear result) they settled at the first opportunity. It explains the chump change amount they settled for anyway.
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[...]I've searched the forum, but I didn't find any information about CDPR that settle in court for about 1 million dollar.
Article 1
Article 2
I wonder why they did it.
They could fight the case, and beat it in court. They could prove their innocence.....
But they settle instead!
[...]
They settle guys. they admit they was guilty.
Let me know your opinion
Even if they could beat it; is it really worth it at this point? They have a lot on their plate. Only a handful of modders remain interested in making something special in hopes that there will be significant changes releasing soon - 'Why bother improving a game you paid for when the people you paid are barely interested in doing so?' is more pervasive thought than many may realize. If 1.5 doesn't deliver something more tangible than a couple of jackets and the police spawning an extra ten feet away, considering how they started hyping it up last year by naming it 1.5 and mentioning it's significance...only to later tamp down; this game is pretty much a wash. They know it.
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