CD Projekt Red admits Cyberpunk 2077 launch damage still lingers

CD Projekt Red has sold Cyberpunk 2077 back into good graces, but the studio is now admitting that the 2020 launch may never stop shadowing the franchise. Michał Nowakowski said he is not fully convinced the game earned a complete redemption arc, a rare acknowledgment that some players will always remember the broken PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions, the refund scramble and the trust hit that followed.

Cyberpunk 2077 arrived on December 10, 2020, with blockbuster expectations and a technical mess that quickly became industry shorthand for a release that shipped too early. By December 14, CD Projekt Red was apologizing for the game’s poor performance on PS4 and Xbox One and offering refunds. Three days later, Sony Interactive Entertainment removed the game from the PlayStation Store and said it would give digital buyers full refunds, turning a troubled launch into a console-store disaster that few players have forgotten.

The fallout did not end with angry players. CD Projekt later settled a 2023 class-action lawsuit that alleged it misled investors about the game’s condition at release, another reminder that launch damage can spread well beyond review scores and social media outrage. Even so, the financial recovery has been real. In its FY 2024 materials, CD Projekt said Cyberpunk 2077 surpassed 30 million units sold in November 2024, while the Phantom Liberty expansion topped 8 million copies. The company also said both releases were major drivers of earnings and pointed to a BAFTA win for Cyberpunk 2077 in the Best Evolving Game category.

That makes the studio’s newest comments more than a routine bit of corporate humility. CD Projekt has also teased additional Cyberpunk-related content in 2026, while The Witcher 4 still has no release window in the reporting tied to these remarks. Every new project now carries the same question: can CD Projekt convince players that the next launch will not repeat the first one?

The answer matters because Cyberpunk 2077’s recovery has already proved that patches, expansions and awards can rebuild a business. What it has not yet proved is whether they can fully erase the memory of refund chaos, last-gen failures and the kind of preorder skepticism that lingers long after the game itself has improved.