When the Fallout Settles

Personally, it hasn't been the greatest couple of weeks for me and my gaming has been on a brief hold.  However, it has been nearly impossible to miss the massive gaming news of late 2020--the fact that the highly anticipated CyberPunk 2077 released and turned out to be a hot, buggy mess.  I've seen reporting on it in my normal gaming sources, but also in some very mainstream media--that tells you a bit about how catastrophic the launch was.  I had decided early on that it was probably best to sit on CyberPunk for awhile and see how it panned out, so luckily I didn't pre-order.  Here's where I would love to tell you "I told you so," and be triumphant, but I'm mostly just bummed that it turned out this way.

There is a ton of speculation about what exactly went wrong and you can spend five minutes on any gaming related social media and find plenty of articles describing the myriad issues surrounding the flawed release.  My skepticism about the release was built around the fact that the game was being completed in the middle of a pandemic (and so many games have opted not to release or to push back until later).  I was surprised that they did finally decide to release--from what I remember of The Witcher 3's release, it was delayed multiple times (but was awesome at release).  Maybe another, longer delay would have given them time to work out the kinks?  From what I've read another delay wasn't going to happen and the corporate overlords wanted it pushed out (even though it seems like it was known that it wasn't ready--and especially the console versions).

Another point of skepticism for me was the fact that releasing on PC, the now, last-gen consoles, as well as trying to release on the now current-gen consoles, seemed very, very ambitious--even in the best of times, and this isn't the best of times.  Even though I've always been a fan of CD Projekt and they have a reputation of being very consumer oriented, there was definitely some shady nonsense going on with the console versions of the game.  However, this hasn't stopped them from raking in massive profits and already reporting that with pre-sales they've already managed to recoup their production costs.

Is this CyberPunk fiasco going to damage CD Projekt's reputation?  In the short term, probably, but I would argue that people have short memories.  Many other games have rolled out in a catastrophically bad state and have managed to survive (and even thrive).  In a few months, after the bugs have been worked out, people will have forgotten and possibly will even start to really enjoy the game.  I've been avoiding reading any reviews, but just from what people are saying online is that they enjoyed the game, but the bugs are obnoxious.  Without the bugs, is it another great game?

I personally plan to wait until later--maybe until the first time it goes on sale, to grab it.  For the time being, I'm contenting myself with playing a different game that also had catastrophic release--Fallout 76.  If you're out there, playing CyberPunk, I hope you are enjoying it.