Cyberpunk 2077 Bugs Cost More Than $1 Billion To CD Projekt Red

On PS4 and Xbox One consoles, Cyberpunk 2077 had a turbulent launch with complaints of hard crashes, glitches and poor performance plaguing the release of the title, resulting in developer CD Projekt Red releasing an apology and also issuing players refunds.

The developer accepted at a conference that the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 triggered “the loss of gamers’ trust and the reputation” but these concerns have had a monetary impact on the parent company of the developer, CD Projekt, according to a new report.

According to a research by Bloomberg, the founders of CD Projekt have seen their combined wealth slashed by more than $1 billion, with business shares plunging by a third over the past six days (Cyberpunk 2077 released on November 10). Bloomberg estimates that the valuation of the 34 per cent stake that the original four founders possessed is jointly down to $3 billion. CEOs Adam Kiciński and Marcin Iwiński, CFO Piotr Nielubowicz, and former CEO Michał Kiciński are currently the founders of CD Projekt.

The share price of CD Projekt has been dropping since December 4, when the game approached release, as reported by GamesIndustry.biz, with the share price dropping 29 per cent from PLN 443 per share to PLN 310.6. This price dropped a further 21 per cent from PLN 395.8 to PNL 296 after the release of the game.

Although this is a major decline for the sector and is directly due to the news of widespread glitches on previous-gen consoles, since the apologies and refund bid from CD Projekt, share prices have risen again by 5 per cent.

Bloomberg analysts have estimated that the long-term impact of the release of Cyberpunk 2077 on the company would play into how rapidly CD Projekt Red solves these bugs.

During the conference call earlier this week, CD Projekt said it plans to “fix the game” while a timeline for when we will begin to see any significant changes remains vague.

“Unfortunately I cannot share the cost related to additional work, but the cost of patching the game is irrelevant compared to what we have already spent,” said CFO Piotr Nielubowicz. “So there’s no question – we definitely want to fix the game; we made a promise to gamers and we’ll be doing everything to stick with it.”