Sony removes Cyberpunk 2077 from PSN
Cyberpunk 2077 has officially been pulled. Earlier today it was confirmed via the Sony official twitter account. That Sony has taken Cyberpunk 2077 off of the PSN store temporarily. As well as issuing refunds to everyone who has bought the game from there.
This of course is after the mess of a release that Cyberpunk had on the 10th December. Yep, just over a week has gone by and we’re already at that stage. So how exactly did we get here?
Well it’s kinda a long story.
The hype… 7 years ago
Cyberpunk 2077 was already going to be a massively hyped up game as it’s made by the same studio who brought us Witcher 3. However, the game was announced around 10 years ago and assumed to have started work on it around 7 years ago (very liberal estimate.)
From the beginning, the game was slated to be completely different to anything that had come before it. And with Witcher 3’s successful developers behind it, it became an instant hype game.
This was both a blessing and a curse. As we’ll soon see…
Pushbacks, pushbacks everywhere!
As of February 2020 Cyberpunk had been delayed three times due to it not being ready. The Polish developers CDPR didn’t seem keen on releasing an unfinished game. Which is understandable, considering how excited people already were about the game.
Now, maybe it’s just me. But a AAA game being pushed back, at least once of those times because of the pandemic, is really not all that bad. It’s actually pretty good. I can only imagine the amount of hours the devs had to pump into the little wiggle room they had in order to get the game done. So for me, the pushbacks were never an issue. I always saw it that I’d rather have a finished game that delivers than an unfinished one that doesn’t because I forced people to cut corners. But hey, maybe that’s just me.
This is not the hardware you’re looking for
OK so, we’re at 10th December. Cyberpunk release day! YAY! Or not… almost immediately there were complaints of “it’s buggy” to the point that some people were claiming it as unplayable. Though, they tend to be a minority. Most people had minor bugs and graphical issues.
From what I’ve seen the main complaint is “it’s had 10 years to be made it shouldn’t look like this!” To which I reply: “technology has moved on alot since then, buddy, and Cyberpunk has been developed with the most recent around. Using a 7 year old console to play it and expect different results is the height of stupidity. A 7 year old console is not gonna be able to smoothly play a game that’s been using the latest development software to make it. It’s just common sense.”
Now I never experienced anything to stop me playing the game. However, that could also be because I was never dumb enough to think that a PS4 would play the game. No matter how it’s labelled. So I played it on my PS5, zero issues.
“But not everyone can afford a next gen console.” Again, true. So best thing to do is to wait out the storm and wait for CDPR to fix the issues plaguing the game when it’s played from a machine it’s not compatible with. Once again, common sense wins the gold medal!
To be fair, these were well documented issues before the release date. Almost everyone who had an early copy said the same thing. So why didn’t people listen and wait or do what I did and avoid playing the game in the older consoles? Your guess is as good as mine…
The final countdown…
So how did we get to this stage of literally making the game unable to be bought? Well from where I stand there’s a whole metric ton of reasons.
1) CDPR were way too accommodating to the fans.
Now this will come off as anti-consumer but it’s not. Alot of fans feel entitled to what they want when they want it. I’m sorry, that’s not how it works. There are real life people behind the scenes making this game. You’re not entitled to anything from them, you can thank them by buying the game. However there was a seedy underbelly that encouraged threatening behaviour every time the game was delayed. CDPR never actively took the time to call these idiot fans out and as a result it became the rule rather than the exception.
2) The investors wanted thier money
The people who invested in the development of Cyberpunk 2077 were clearly giving CDPR problems behind the scenes and pushing them to release the game no matter what. Because they wanted to see their money back. This put CDPR between a rock and a hard place. Between fans threatening to kill them if they delay any longer and the stockholders, they didn’t really have a choice.
3) Fans decided threatening people was a good idea
As previously mentioned. Alot of excited fans got a little too passionate and would threaten and harass CDPR developers. Threatening to kill people because you can’t have your game at that moment in time is showing your mental age. If you genuinely think that’s acceptable, in any way, you need help and lots of it. Like I said, you are entitled to nothing. The developers owe you nothing. They’re working, really hard, to then have the stress of death threats from morons who live in their mum’s basement must’ve been horrific.
Overview
So Sony pulling the plug now is really just the icing on an inevitable mess of a release. All of these have added up to make CDPR look shady as hell. Deliberately releasing a game they knew was unplayable.
However with a bit of nuance it becomes clear that the main killing blows were a combination of CDPR, the investors and the fans. The ironic thing being the fans that were calling the loudest for the game to stop being pushed back are now the ones complaining about it being incomplete.
I did briefly mention this in my review of the game (which is excellent btw) but missed out alot because I didn’t want to ramble. But it’s a shame it’s all come to this.
Will Cyberpunk 2077 survive after it’s brought back onto the store? Who knows. It depends really on the common sense of the fans and from what I’ve seen that’s lacking at best so I’d argue maybe it’ll whimper into obscurity. Which is a shame because it genuinely is such a fun game to get lost in.
