Honestly after the Cyberpunk debacle I can easily see why, the decisions that led to that were almost certainly made by marketing and C-Suite and not the devs. Someone correct me if that’s wrong. If they actually learn from those mistakes I have no doubt they’ll reclaim the rep they had after the Witcher 3
I think they’ve done a great job with that and I really enjoyed Cyberpunk, I mean more with the vast majority of the public there’s still gonna be a stigma whether it’s fair or not. That debacle was really damn visible, undoing that damage in totality is gonna take a new release without those major issues imo
They said once that it did cost them more to create phantom liberty and Update 2.0 than they will ever get back – but it was an investment into their reputation, not primary a business decision.
the CP2077 launch was rocky, but most of their previous games haven't had that level of hype. The Witcher 3 taking off like it did, gave them the confidence to go bigger. CP2077 is in a great place now, even if it didn't start that way.
It was entirely unfinished. I also purchased it at launch and played it from day one, and it was one of the most glitchy and broken gaming experiences of my life. The cop system was nonexistent, the vehicle call system never worked, the driving mechanics were worse than watch dogs', people would t pose constantly, tons of missions glitched so that I could not complete them and had to root around in save files for a previous point to load or just abandon it, and I could go on for quite some time. It got a lot of hate because it was not a playable product and deserved a lot of hate. Now its fantastic and finally worth people's time and money.
It was astoundingly buggy, didn't work at all on multiple platforms that they released it to, was over hyped (part their fault, part community fault), the game felt "flat" and lifeless due to it missing a lot of the small details and better 'AI' of the GTA series.
It just wasn't the game they promised at all. And the fact that they kept delaying it then saying "we want to make sure it's ship-shape" gave people the impression that the game would be polished upon release, and it wasn't even close to polished.
It's improved leaps and bounds since then, though. When I first bought it I ended up refunding it, but recently I bought it again and it's so much better.
the game was buggy but okay on pc. On last gen consoles though it was actually unplayable performance and bugs wise so much that ps store took it down and refunded the buyers. People who are still salty are just unreasonable though
You got amnesia or something? That game at release was a buggy, incomplete mess. Features originally promised and advertised were just missing. To this day, some of those features are still missing. Did you play through act 1 and somehow thought that a cutscene summarizing your growth with Jackie was the intended experience? The whole game reeked of rushed release. Hell, they still have an empty spot in the hills where the casino's supposed to be.
The game has been hyped since like 2013, and the final game is quite a bit different from the hype. Personally, I didn't follow any of that and just tried it when it came out since it seemed up my alley, and I thought it was pretty good, but buggy as shit for a full release.
Anyway, it's a pretty great game now. I really enjoyed the narrative, and the rebalancing of the game I think was wise as well if nothing else for removing the weird armor ratings from clothing.
I got lucky with the release too, only got a few t pose bugs, but the truth of the matter is that it just wasn't quite ready. What was there was fun enough, but most people just couldn't access it. Now, it's a 9.8/10 game imo, so good on them.
It would be nice if the entire world didn't consolidate into two mega corps. Good on CDR for having their own vision.
CP2077 + Phantom Liberty are excellent. I just started a new playthrough. I wish it had released in this shape.
Every company that gets bought by another corporation either cranks out a few good games and then dies, or cranks out an okay game and then dies. The eventual outcome is always death.
Bullfrog, Raven, Westwood Studios, Bioware, Origin, Maxis, Viceral Games, all of them.
There are some exceptions like Naughty Dog (is there another one?) that kept their quality after getting acquired. But I agree in general with your thesis.
I doubt it. They laid off 9 percent of the staff this July. That's far away from the 2077 launch. I would guess it's after the majority of Phantom Liberty's development is done.
Please correct me if I *have the wrong impression here but how much does a sentiment like this matter if some big bethesda shaped behemoth makes the moves to acquire? Wouldnt business sense dictate that you sell if the offer is juicy enough?
Well thats what im wondering about. If you own (or are in the decision-making loop of) a company and you have the sentiment that you care more about your autonomy and products, how much will that matter if you are presented with a very large offer from one of the giants in the industry?
The videogame world is weird. Say you are a small buisness in a miner town making cast and hardened steel parts for mining equipment. If a big manufacturer comes around and offers to buy you out, your alternative to saying "yes" is them, opening up their own buisness and driving your sales into the ground with cheaper offers. But if Bethesda says to CD Project RED "Either you accept the acquisition or we are going to make better games." CDPR can just say "Haha, good luck."
Thats good! I assumed there would be a lot of various pressures in a situation like that, like resisting a starbucks takeover as a small cafe or something. It could also end up being the best choice for their employees too if the offer is generous, so I could imagine that being an issue as well
Pushing a shitty launcher, selling abandoned games, selling incomplete games, putting DRMs on multiplayer, selling a lot of low quality games, not expanding their overworked team despite the profits they make, etc.
It got much worse with the success of the Witcher3 and has kept on going down.
I think there's even a browser extension that is used to mark shitty games on gog, that have missing features or DRMs.
Funny for a platform that has the motto of selling hand-picked, DRM-free games.