Cyberpunk 2077 Became a “Cool Thing Not to Like”, CD Projekt Red’s VP of PR and Communication Believes

According to CD Projekt Red’s Vice President of PR and Communication, Platkow-Gilewski, Cyberpunk 2077 was way better than it was received in 2020.

A lot has been said and written about the troubled launch of CDPR’s Cyberpunk 2077. Following the success of The Witcher 3, the open-world RPG was heavily hyped and gamers expected a lot from it. Unfortunately, due to various reasons, the game’s launch was rather rocky with the game suffering from numerous performance issues and bugs. To make things worse, Sony even decided to temporarily pull the game from its PlayStation Store in December 2020. Following various patches, the game made it’s way back to Sony’s store six months later.

To the studio’s credit, CD Projekt Red managed to turn things around, releasing numerous updates to further improve the game. In addition, the game’s comeback was further fueled by the release of the Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime on Netflix.

In a freshly-published interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Platkow-Gilewski talked about the game’s development, troubled launch, changes within CDPR, and the upcoming launch of the Phantom Liberty expansion featuring Idris Elba. The interview is a good read in which CDPR’s Vice President of PR and Communication talks about fixing the relationship with its players, but also says that, at one point, Cyberpunk 2077 just became a cool thing not to like.

“I actually believe Cyberpunk on launch was way better than it was received, and even the first reviews were positive,” the executive said. “Then it became a cool thing not to like it. We went from hero to zero really fast. That was the tough moment. We didn’t know what was happening. We knew that the game is great, yes we can improve it, yes we need to take time to do it, and we need to rebuild some stuff.”

He concluded, “That took us a lot of time, but I don’t believe we were ever broken. We were always like: Let’s do this.”

What are your thoughts on this? Was the game better at launch than it was received? Did it become “cool” not to like CDPR’s title? Hit the comments down below.

Cyberpunk 2077 is available globally now for PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One.