Was it the Shareholders?

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Why would a company release a product if they know it has issues for some consumers?
I've been in software development for over 20 years (not gaming software but enterprise business software), this situation occurs all the time. I've worked for start-ups, public and private companies of all sizes. Product gets released with known bugs, with cut-back features and reduced scope, etc., for a number of reasons. My guess (and it is only a guess) is that this was released for the reason of revenue recognition for fiscal year 2020. Public companies have different accounting rules than privately-held companies. Despite the huge number of purchased pre-orders, CDPR can not recognize all that revenue in 2020 unless the product it's tied to is actually released and delivered into customer hands in 2020.
That's my theory.

And that’s all well and good—but they need to address these issues and commit to bringing them back in.

I’m sure even in your neck of the proverbial software development woods, you guys implement those features after release. You don’t do what some are suggesting here, which is saying “Yeah, sorry, it’s shit, just wait for the next app/website/game, we got the groundwork made here, but the REAL (insert thing) comes out with the next release.”
 
And that’s all well and good—but they need to address these issues and commit to bringing them back in.

I’m sure even in your neck of the proverbial software development woods, you guys implement those features after release. You don’t do what some are suggesting here, which is saying “Yeah, sorry, it’s shit, just wait for the next app/website/game, we got the groundwork made here, but the REAL (insert thing) comes out with the next release.”

We do typically implement them after release, it's just a question of time and effort (if said features are still technically possible), in the next our subsequent patches. That's the problem though - we run out of time and person-hours to do all the work before the announced date - resources are not infinite.
This current 'problem' with Cyberpunk 2077 is not the fault of the developers and designers and all the engineers, it's a management problem and they made a management decision:

Delay Release Again = A bunch of angry customers because of another delay and little or no revenue recognized for 2020
or ...
Release Now with Problems = An angry subset of customers due to bugs and a huge pile of revenue in 2020 minus a few rebates

It's a hit to their reputation in either case, but which would you choose?

ps. in my case I would argue to release the PC version and delay console, but maybe that wasn't an option?
 
It was because of the stupid Hedgehogs. Not a lot of folks know this but Poland was recently taken over by giant dimwitted Hedgehogs with advanced alien weapon technology. The Hedgehogs forced CD Projekt Red to release the game early because they just wanted to play the game and didn't care what condition it was in. Then instead of playing the game the Hedgehogs had a rhubarb pie eating contest and all got tummy aches and diarrhea. They still haven't played the game.. just been watching reruns of Remington Steele and Moonlighting.
 
We do typically implement them after release, it's just a question of time and effort (if said features are still technically possible), in the next our subsequent patches. That's the problem though - we run out of time and person-hours to do all the work before the announced date - resources are not infinite.
This current 'problem' with Cyberpunk 2077 is not the fault of the developers and designers and all the engineers, it's a management problem and they made a management decision:

Delay Release Again = A bunch of angry customers because of another delay and little or no revenue recognized for 2020
or ...
Release Now with Problems = An angry subset of customers due to bugs and a huge pile of revenue in 2020 minus a few rebates

It's a hit to their reputation in either case, but which would you choose?

ps. in my case I would argue to release the PC version and delay console, but maybe that wasn't an option?

I personally don’t mind the choice to release it now. I just posit that they should address the content and feature issue, as I’m sure most dev companies would do.

Now, I might have been misunderstood—I say developers, meaning the company itself, not the individual developers. They’re essentially the cashiers, or customer service reps, to give a decent comparison. They don’t make the decisions, they just follow them. They’re not to blame, for that we agree.

I think if they were to delay console, that’d be even more reason to have even last gen working astoundingly. I’d be for it, I suppose, but they’d only have about half of the potential take that they’d have had currently. The only issue is that they’ve lost a billion dollars at this point, and I believe that’s mostly because all they’ve done isn’t address bugs and not the actual crux of the issue.

The power of just saying “Yeah, we know about the cut content, and we’re sorry. We’ll be putting that in where possible and we’ll keep you updated on what we can and can’t fit in, alongside bug fixes and AI improvements.”

I’d say that’s a fair stance, right? I mean, I’m still going to wait until February’s patch to make up my mind. All I’m asking for is that they acknowledge the issues aside from bugs and commit to fixing it.
 
I personally don’t mind the choice to release it now. I just posit that they should address the content and feature issue, as I’m sure most dev companies would do.

Now, I might have been misunderstood—I say developers, meaning the company itself, not the individual developers. They’re essentially the cashiers, or customer service reps, to give a decent comparison. They don’t make the decisions, they just follow them. They’re not to blame, for that we agree.

I think if they were to delay console, that’d be even more reason to have even last gen working astoundingly. I’d be for it, I suppose, but they’d only have about half of the potential take that they’d have had currently. The only issue is that they’ve lost a billion dollars at this point, and I believe that’s mostly because all they’ve done isn’t address bugs and not the actual crux of the issue.

The power of just saying “Yeah, we know about the cut content, and we’re sorry. We’ll be putting that in where possible and we’ll keep you updated on what we can and can’t fit in, alongside bug fixes and AI improvements.”

I’d say that’s a fair stance, right? I mean, I’m still going to wait until February’s patch to make up my mind. All I’m asking for is that they acknowledge the issues aside from bugs and commit to fixing it.

Yes, I definitely think they should make some kind of strong, truthful statement about their intentions with the game. But again, as a publicly traded company, they are strongly bound by certain rules, communication content being one of them. I'm not sure what the rules are in their case but making some public statements with regards to features and release dates can be argued as 'promises' that have legal ramifications.

I think they made a business decision and a bit of a gamble - and came up short unfortunately. But I think what's lost on a lot of people posting around the webs and forums and YouTube is this - there are literally millions of people who purchased the game who are happy with their purchase (like me). I've put in about 50 hours on PC. Have not seen ANY bugs (ok maybe one minor one) and LOVE the game so far. Do I wish it had more? Content and improvements? Absolutely! But so far so good, I am enjoying it immensely ... and there are millions more like me - we just don't come onto forums like this and talk about it - we're busy playing.

I'm looking forward to all the changes in the future.
 
The situation makes zero sense. The logical thing to do was to delay the game again especially on last gen consoles. They offer a standard company apology, but you can tell that the situation is deeper than that.

I hope it wasn't the "pressure" from some gamers being upset about delays. The most contrived worthless outrage is from gamers demanding a studio release a game they want to play. It's a bluff, they are just disappointed and immature. Take2 and Rockstar understand this. They release the most polished games after many delays.

At the end of the day, it's most likely the money as usual (as you say probably shareholders or something like that). The game is incredible, but it doesn't feel ready. Feels like an amazing early access lol.
 
they can't fix the story and the missions. we have to wait for CP2

Very similar to the situation UbiSoft found/finds itself in with Ghost Recon Breakpoint. The game tanked hard (not necessarily the case with CP), ****ed off legions of fans with oodles of bugs and glitches, a story line that could easily be bettered by a pack of drunken Kinkajous, a beautiful world that many feel is lifeless (compared to Wildlands), and features from other Ubi franchises that shouldn't be in a GR game (not the case with CP). Rendering GRB not fixable with patches or DLC as it's core is beyond repair.

For the record: I'm actually enjoying CP far more than I did GRB, but am disappointed that so much touted content has been left out or disabled in the code.
 
The game already paid for itself with pre-orders alone, before the game even came out.
That isn't quite right.

They had the money from the preorders, or at least some of it, but that money wasn't income for them. Rather, those prepayments obligated them to fulfill their their side of the contract. Thus, the preorders were correctly listed in their financial statements as a liability, and a very large one relative to their other liabilities. Once the game was finished and released, they had performed their contractual obligations, and were entitled to recognize the income from those purchases. Releasing on or before December 31 meant the difference between reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in liabilities and little income for fiscal year 2020, versus reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in income, and little liabilities for fiscal year 2020.

Management chose the latter. I'm not saying it was the correct thing to do. I'm just saying that given the rules for income recognition, they were never going to make any other choice. When they were non-public, they might have. But as a public company, there's no way that they weren't going to release in time to recognize that revenue.

Interestingly, given their comments in the past couple of days about the unfinished state of the game in regard to last gen consoles, one could make a fairly compelling argument that the console revenue (about 40% of sales, from what I've read), still should be reported as a liability rather than as revenue. That will be an issue for them to hash out with their auditors. The auditors will probably cave -- they almost always do.
 
Very similar to the situation UbiSoft found/finds itself in with Ghost Recon Breakpoint. The game tanked hard (not necessarily the case with CP), ****ed off legions of fans with oodles of bugs and glitches, a story line that could easily be bettered by a pack of drunken Kinkajous, a beautiful world that many feel is lifeless (compared to Wildlands), and features from other Ubi franchises that shouldn't be in a GR game (not the case with CP). Rendering GRB not fixable with patches or DLC as it's core is beyond repair.

For the record: I'm actually enjoying CP far more than I did GRB, but am disappointed that so much touted content has been left out or disabled in the code.

The fix is a lot more easy for story than you’d think initially—it does take time and effort. Look at BG3, where as they worked on the story, they told fans “hey, were doing a story patch that changes some things—as a result you’ll have to start over a new file.”

Might peeve some, but with CP’s touted replayability, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

Now, as far as the game itself functions... it just needs some more TLC. Content and functions within the game can be added as well, and will likely take similar amounts of work as fixing the story and what have you. I’m sure the story itself isn’t bad. I believe most people just want it expanded a bit to feel more like your choices actually mattered.

I don’t subscribe to the idea that, after paying $60 on this game and it flops, that we should just throw up our hands and dedicate ourselves to buying the next game, which may or may not deliver more of the same. I believe we need to hunker down and demand they fix this game and make it into the game they promised, instead of giving them a free pass to just have our money and know we’d pay them for what could possibly be the same thing some years down the line. It’s asinine.
 
CDPR went public on 16th March 2018, half way through the 4 year development cycle.

Is this why CDPR went from "when its ready" to, "release unfinished game on as many platforms as possible"?

I'm still happy with the game (See last thread: Can't understand all the negativity (PC) ). It's not what I was expecting, and there are definitely things that need to be worked on - but I still think all the foundations are there for the game we all expected with time and updates.

I just wonder if CDPR being publicly listed is what caused this pretty bad launch? No matter how optimistic and positive I am about the game, there has doubtlessly been considerable damage to CDPR's reputation and consumer good-will in the industry. It does seem incredibly short sighted to throw all that away, and completely out of character for CDPR. CDPR are historically a company by gamers for gamers and I wonder if allowing outside influences for money has caused a shift in priorities outside of the actual developers control.

What do you think, did any of this have anything do with the IPO?

Probably I mean look how much false advertising they did to drum up money. If I'm not mistaken I'm pretty sure at least one or both of the CEOs will retire soon after this washes away. He can't retire right now because of possible liability but if he waits he'll retire. That or they'll end up selling the company.

They cashed in and now we just watch to see if they check out.
 
My guess here is that way back when, Google heard about the game, and approached CDPR and asked them if when the game launches they could also release it on Stadia, and in return they'd front them some money. CDPR said yes.

Then they approached Sony and Microsoft and said the same thing for the old Xbox and Playstation, which they said yes, as long as it would be able to be released at the same time as their next-gen consoles. CDPR who thought it would have been ready back in March and they'd have months to work on the next-gen, said yes.

But it didn't work so well. It was initially made for the PC, so they had to retro it for the Stadia, the Xbox, and the Playstation, and not all of the things they wanted in were working on all the platforms, so now they had to delay and delay again.

Which now meant they went from working on just the PC, to 4 platforms, then to 6 to 9 platforms.

Basically they just bit off too much, and couldn't handle it. But probably in some contract somewhere, it says that if they didn't have it ready by the X-box and/or Playstation launch, they'd have to forfit money.
 
My guess here is that way back when, Google heard about the game, and approached CDPR and asked them if when the game launches they could also release it on Stadia, and in return they'd front them some money. CDPR said yes.

Then they approached Sony and Microsoft and said the same thing for the old Xbox and Playstation, which they said yes, as long as it would be able to be released at the same time as their next-gen consoles. CDPR who thought it would have been ready back in March and they'd have months to work on the next-gen, said yes.

But it didn't work so well. It was initially made for the PC, so they had to retro it for the Stadia, the Xbox, and the Playstation, and not all of the things they wanted in were working on all the platforms, so now they had to delay and delay again.

Which now meant they went from working on just the PC, to 4 platforms, then to 6 to 9 platforms.

Basically they just bit off too much, and couldn't handle it. But probably in some contract somewhere, it says that if they didn't have it ready by the X-box and/or Playstation launch, they'd have to forfit money.

If everything worked on PC, why not just have the whole package on PC, and release what you can on the others, promising to work what you can to fit on the older systems, if that was an actual problem?
 
If everything worked on PC, why not just have the whole package on PC, and release what you can on the others, promising to work what you can to fit on the older systems, if that was an actual problem?
Dude there's a big enough shitstorm on forums, reddit etc just now because of how much worse the game looks and plays on OG consoles compared to PC, can't even imagine how much worse it would be if it had released with features that the PC version has not being implemented on consoles, the internet would literally implode :facepalm:
 
Dude there's a big enough shitstorm on forums, reddit etc just now because of how much worse the game looks and plays on OG consoles compared to PC, can't even imagine how much worse it would be if it had released with features that the PC version has not being implemented on consoles, the internet would literally implode :facepalm:

Sounds like we both agree that the game needed longer in the oven—and since that option is now gone, they need to really buckle down and fix it.

No blame on the devs themselves, just on management and shareholders.
 
CDPR went public on 16th March 2018, half way through the 4 year development cycle.

Is this why CDPR went from "when its ready" to, "release unfinished game on as many platforms as possible"?

I'm still happy with the game (See last thread: Can't understand all the negativity (PC) ). It's not what I was expecting, and there are definitely things that need to be worked on - but I still think all the foundations are there for the game we all expected with time and updates.

I just wonder if CDPR being publicly listed is what caused this pretty bad launch? No matter how optimistic and positive I am about the game, there has doubtlessly been considerable damage to CDPR's reputation and consumer good-will in the industry. It does seem incredibly short sighted to throw all that away, and completely out of character for CDPR. CDPR are historically a company by gamers for gamers and I wonder if allowing outside influences for money has caused a shift in priorities outside of the actual developers control.

What do you think, did any of this have anything do with the IPO?
Unfortunately this seems to happen when small devs turn into big devs. Going public was good for them financially but it probably hurt their rep with their fans, especially after all this.
 
You can bet the shareholders are in big part to blame.

Three delays is not something they want, much less four delays. They want, and in some cases need, a return on their investment. Shareholders rarely have an interest in the long term wellbeing of a company as long as the immediate situation is good. Gamers were getting fed up with waiting. CP2077 was turning into a joke.

Let's not forget 2020 was a shit year for most and development certainly suffered from the situation.

Take all of this and you can bet these shareholders were getting jittery and applying obscene pressure on the studio.
 
Honestly I think the state of CP2077 is a mixture of horrific mismanagement, Covid, and veteran staff leaving (I think like 4 out of 10 game designers from Witcher 3 are still with CDPR. I don't remember the exact number just that a decent chunk left). You can still see them iterating on some pretty basic aspects in the 2018 and 2019 gameplay reveal videos. Some content being cut, like item investigation. Trade menus being different, UI etc. Stuff that really should have been finalized by then. Even something major like lifepaths are something they didn't have in 2018. Which probably explains why they are shorter than a gunfight.

Which really just stinks of the management staff being not great. And Covid just bringing this issue to the surface even more than it otherwise would have been. A combination of many factors.

No idea who thought it was remotely acceptable to release the game on last gen consoles though. If you're a company going for the image of consumer friendliness and all that, you'd say yeah no. We aren't releasing this on last gen. But almost no one has the next gen consoles due to shortages and scalpers, so more money in last gen. Kinda felt like money spoke there. They talked a big game, still do, but actions spoke a lot louder. Honestly this is the most confusing decision that CDPR has done in my eyes.

The games story is great, I love the game and spent an ungodly amount of time on it but you don't have to dig far to see how broken it is. Or rather unfinished. Its just unmissable.

I think blaming the shareholders here is actually wrong and a bit of a cop out, CDPR is actually kinda lucky with theirs. They seem to be a fairly understanding bunch from what we have seen. But the games development has been a mess that stinks a similar smell to anthem and ME: Andromeda which was 100% management staff messing up with over ambition and no clear plan.
 
Sounds like we both agree that the game needed longer in the oven—and since that option is now gone, they need to really buckle down and fix it.

No blame on the devs themselves, just on management and shareholders.
Thing is it could just be a case that the game we got is like this because that's all they could stuff into the OG consoles and still have them run it, the tech in those consoles wasn't even cutting edge when they released 7 years ago and if like people are saying CDPR built the game on PC, when they came to try and make the build work on OG consoles it just wasn't going to work with those limitations so a lot of stuff had to be cut down or scrapped to enable them to release the game on all platforms on the same date.
 
I don't necessarily think it would've been that bad if the PC version had features that weren't in the other versions. It already happens with things like mods where PC games have a more robust mod community or mods in general. Also how games on PC support keyboard and mouse. Or better graphics overall.

As for the topic on shareholders I thought I read that the stock price was tanking after all the bad news regarding the game. Shareholders probably weren't too happy about that.
 
Thing is it could just be a case that the game we got is like this because that's all they could stuff into the OG consoles and still have them run it, the tech in those consoles wasn't even cutting edge when they released 7 years ago and if like people are saying CDPR built the game on PC, when they came to try and make the build work on OG consoles it just wasn't going to work with those limitations so a lot of stuff had to be cut down or scrapped to enable them to release the game on all platforms on the same date.

If that’s the case, how come other groundbreaking games like FF7R and GoT worked so well on PS4? How come we have so many great games that came out this year, but for some reason the moment it hits Dec 10, suddenly the PS4 is relegated to basically “small indie company” tier?

The argument that is being perpetuated is basically “Please understand, Sony is a small indie company and the PS4 is literally a cardboard box with a microwave’s data chip inside it, you literally can’t run Pong on it with any kind of decent frame rate”

Groundbreaking games have been released on it this year. Really astounding games that put CP2077 to shame. And somehow, this game is just “too damn powerful” to run on “Sony’s garbage tier equipment that barely even worked back when it was made” What the ever living hell is this argument anyway? Have you not played FF7R or GoT? Have you not played Star Wars Battlefront 2? (Sure, shitty practices, but the game seemed to handle pretty well and looked decent)
 
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