Rockstar Games >>>>> CDPR

never forget this

What everyone needs to take into consideration when viewing the whole situation is what role CDProjekt has taken and been given in the industry today. They have made a whole, huge thing out of taking the crown as the one AAA developer that doesn't end up in the many pitfalls of the industry at large, such as unfinished games, forced wokeness, tacked-on gimmicks, and unethical business models paired with other anti-consumer practices. This is part of what has propelled their popularity, and they've played along really well with it and ran with it for some time, heads held high (by rights at that).

For them to release a fairly broken game on 8th gen consoles, terribly optimized for PC, and even refuse reviewers to show their own gameplay until patches were in place, and even go so far as to hide console issues up to and into release date is unacceptable. I love them to bits, especially since they've been something of an antidote to many toxic features and issues that arose in the 7th gen, as well as their incredible technical and artistic prowess coming from what was a small team and company, to begin with. I also love GOG and its approach to consumers, with no DRM, decent pricing, and great overall integration of features and tech. This is precisely what my disappointment stems from; their active role as the paragon of healthy practices in the industry has now come to an end, even if it could be only temporary. TW 3 was a well-placed and well-deserved kick to the collective nuts of the industry at large, but now they've gone and kicked their own nuts and in part legitimized what they previously spoke fervently against, and this has to be addressed (in a reasonable manner though).

I will point out when my darlings make mistakes; many circumstances revolving around the release of Cyberpunk 2077 are dire and easily deserving of criticism. I still love CDProjekt; but I don't love how they've handled this for now. I think many are in the same boat, let's not pretend that their critics are simply "haters" without grounds for their opinions.

I believe most of the backlash is actually for people demanding the game to be actually woke, instead of people complaining about it being woke isnt it?

Indeed, there's widespread discontent for it not being woke enough, many reviews have mentioned this as well. I have no idea how one could get the impression of the opposite, in mainstream coverage at any rate.

Most likely people will not complain about the game being woke because everything in the game was already part of the universe they used as basis and because thats exactly what one would expect from a cyberpunk game. It is not like they changed stuff to pander to certain demographic. 

Im really exited to play it, I was going to wait for the next gen version but will probably play it on XSX around January-February after a few more patches as most likely this game will not run well with ray tracing on consoles.

Part of the reason I like their choice of setting is that they are so invested in the Pen & Paper version of the Cyberpunk RPG setting, they seem to have adhered quite strictly to it. That's a huge plus for someone who loves good old-fashioned roleplaying games! 

Playing it on PC and really enjoying it so far. I love how the skill tree and other actions require attributes. It's a nice fallback to Fallout New Vegas, and Fallout 3. I never really liked how Skyrim took away attributes allowing you to build any character you wanted no matter how nonsensical it was. Oh, you're a Nord that uses Heavy Armor and a Greatsword, but you are also really good at casting Illusion magic? Yeah, that makes sense. The perk trees allow for a lot of different playstyles. So far I've noticed you can be...

A Stealth Hacker
A Combat Hacker
A Stealthy Mantis Blades User
A Samurai ala Sekiro
A character based on Metal Bat
A Gorilla Puglist
A Guy that runs around throwing knives all day.
A gunslinger with timeslowing effects ala Max Payne.
A Tech gun user.
A Stealthy Headshot Hunter
A Grenades and Shotgun guy.
etc.

Combat feels a lot like playing Borderlands, or Fallout 3, but in a big city. There's no level scaling I've seen so far, so the world was built piece by piece instead of randomly thrown together. Enemies use cover fairly well, and are pretty good at finding you when you're in stealth. Having to hide bodies adds a great MGS touch to the stealth mechanics.

I love how you need street cred to buy high level gear. It helps make sure that you don't buy something akin to a Daedric Axe at the start of the game and then body everyone.

Driving is okay, but the starting car feels like a tank. I can't wait to get a better car.

I've been listening to it while playing FS2020 and they stay intentionally vague on refunds while continuing to ask players to hang on to the game.

Basically if you really have to, got through the normal channels, Sony/MS for digital, retailers for physical.
There is nothing extra in place to facilitate these refunds, normal rules apply.
If that doesn't work you can email CDPR and they will try to help.
They don't specify how, just reiterate again they would like players to hold on to their copy and give them a chance.
We humbly ask you to wait for the Januari and Februari updates.

No info on return rate or requests for refunds.

They don't want to go in to any detail about problems with the PC version, make sure you update your NVidea drivers is all. They dodge the question by stating that pc reviews are mixed with (tainted by) console reviews.

We have more and more happy players playing on last gen consoles, millions of gamers playing on PC.

Dodging questions about sales splits, as expected between PC and consoles, no idea about next gen / old gen.

AI and NPC behavior is part of the bugs, they'll be working on that.

Free updates for next gen, hope people don't wait.

We're not revealing sales numbers.

Oof. I hate it when games don't reveal sales numbers. That's a sure sign that somebody is trying to hide something. "We had X amount on concurrent players". Fuck that. Just tell me sales numbers.

This sounds more and more like a game I'm excited to play on PS5. not Ps4 and my PC won't be able to handle it, but PS5? yeah, by then they'll have ironed out the kinks.

Personally, I tend to give games like this (open world RPGs with so many mechanics and subtle details) a lot of leeway on the glitches and performance issues. I did with Skyrim, I did with Red Dead, I did with Fallout 4, and I have with most every open world action RPG I've ever played, because the game underneath that garnish of crap is actually really damn good. Skyrim is one of my favourites, as is Red Dead Redemption 2. Fallout is up there as well. So yeah, while these games are glitchy, that kinda comes with the territory, and it makes sense that a HUGE studio like Rockstar or Bethesda can do (theoretically) better testing than a relatively small crew like CD Projekt Red. yeah, it sucks that Cyberpunk is broken and nigh unplayable, but the hatred being spewed has taken it WAY too far.

They're a huge company and yet I feel bad for them. They do not deserve this hate.