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[Moogle11]

That's not true.

Why would investors be happy about a poorly made game where there's going to be tons of refunds? How are they going to make money from a lousy product?

Many investors are likely pissed about CDPR offering refunds. However, if CDPR hadn't done refunds, many wouldn't care as it sold great, they'd have gotten their big returns and then can just not invest in the next CDPR game if their reputation doesn't get salvaged. And let's face it, their reputation will be fine as games releasing broken and getting fixed latter is sadly becoming the norm. And at least here they have the PC and XSX versions that are mostly ok so it's not like everyone is disgruntled.

But short-term investors don't care about anything other than getting their quick, big return. The future of the company is moot as long as they get that as they'll just be looking for what they see as the next sure fire big, quick return. Long-term, risk adverse investors are mostly just going with diverse portfolios they pay little attention to until they get closer to retirement age.

 

[Phase]

Awesome summary! Thank you so much! I would've never bothered if it wasn't for your summary.

I love CDPR but there is definitely no excuse for Cyberpunk 2077. And I just hate it when they keep referring to "last gen"!! m@#$f@#rs, you built this game FOR the "last gen" DURING the entire "last gen". For the record, there is no "next gen" version of the game out yet. I have been playing this on a PS5 and yes it runs better, but it was supposed to run better on PS4/XBO.

I also honestly am a little bummed that this game does not have a 3rd person mode. I am not buying their excuse of not having it. I personally think 3rd person would've been a better game but that will require more work, control mechanics like parkour, animations, cut scenes so they probably took the "easier" route and cut corners. This is just my opinion and yeah, I prefer 3rd person over a FPS, like a million times over.

So disappointed in this game. Not a single quest I have played so far without it bugging out. I am still enjoying the story and characters honestly and the City they built is truly breathtaking..

Agreed. Here's what I was expecting (note I didn't follow development at all): A Witcher like game but in a cyberpunk world. A lot of depth and and interesting side quests to get sidetracked on, along with competent AI and a realistically "living" world. Lots of ways to play and go about things. My initial thought was how fun a playthrough vehemently opposed to technology and the technocracy would be.

Unfortunately, I've watched about 12hrs of a playthrough so far and don't consider the story or quests interesting, but that's my opinion. Even the main characters animations seem off. The dialogue of the main characters is alright, but that's about it. The world was probably void of actual NPC's until a few days before launch, at least that's my impression based on how limited their AI is. I'm interested enough to finish watching the playthrough, but I can't see any way I'd purchase this game and it's disappointing. I don't get hyped for many games but this is one I was anticipating.

 

[ethomaz]

Witcher1,2+3 had way more bugs than 2077 at launch.

I played The Witcher 3 on PS4 at launch and it was not... it had performance issues but not like Cyberpunk.
It was unplayable due the bad combat and not bugs.

 

[Keihart]

As polish... this is the most polish sentence "They also state earlier in the call there was limited QA testing done on the game, it was all done "in house" and no experienced third party contractors were used. CDPR employees played iterative builds of the game in their homes due to the pandemic and that's how they tested the game. "

Polish companies are so cheap, they would 100% ask devs to beta test themselves in home for free in their time. I absolutely see this...

Remember when Bethesda said they were testing on automated machines so there should not be many bugs on their next game

 

[DjMystix]

Bro PS4 and Xbone are last gen. The PC version does exist.

Also I think the game is way more immersive in first person and I'm very glad they went with it. Adding a third person option would be nice for people but hardly a priority considering combat etc is very clearly designed for first person.

If the game is unplayable on old gen - that isn't fair and you should be refunded. But also I can't get my head around wanting to play a game like the on old gen gear anyway. Just wait - it was obvious it was never going to run well on old hardware.

Agreed and I see your point on PC. I have a capable PC to run this as well but how does that justify this being an utter trash on base PS4 and XBO. They never said this is only for PC and last gen consoles are just aspirations. And then went on to threat everyone on takedowns on early streams and also preventing media/reviewers to not show console footage. All that wreaks of con and deceit.

Like i said, I love those guys, I have less problems with the game given I am playing on PS5 but IMHO CDPR deserves all the crap they are getting for this game. They had 8+ years to figure this out and they blew it and were completely deceitful about it.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Exactly. In the accumulative 8 years that I did QA at two different studios, our in-house QA did the most work and was much larger. A lot of the time we worked with Q-Loc and they just kind of helped tidy things up and tie up loose ends.

The in-house QA team can generally be larger than a lot of the other teams depending on the developer/publisher and project at hand.

The fact that they had other devs QA their own work was/is a huge mistake. I can't even begin to tell you the amount of times in my QA experience I had a coder/programmer tell me, "I saw it on my system, it was just fine!" But after baking a build I showed them what they saw was fine and it was completely broken. It's WAY too common.

I fully agree, I was a full time dev (know how hard it is to test your own code, automation does only just so much), I now manage more and I am blessed by some very experienced QA’s that have worked for many years in the games industry and will swear to that blindly.

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

As polish... this is the most polish sentence "They also state earlier in the call there was limited QA testing done on the game, it was all done "in house" and no experienced third party contractors were used. CDPR employees played iterative builds of the game in their homes due to the pandemic and that's how they tested the game. "

Polish companies are so cheap, they would 100% ask devs to beta test themselves in home for free in their time. I absolutely see this...

A Polish company took a product home to polish it and they didn't properly polish it.

Heh

 

[Moogle11]

Agreed and I see your point on PC. I have a capable PC to run this as well but how does that justify this being an utter trash on base PS4 and XBO. They never said this is only for PC and last gen consoles are just aspirations. And then went on to threat everyone on takedowns on early streams and also preventing media/reviewers to not show console footage. All that wreaks of con and deceit.

Like i said, I love those guys, I have less problems with the game given I am playing on PS5 but IMHO CDPR deserves all the crap they are getting for this game. They had 8+ years to figure this out and they blew it and were completely deceitful about it.

Yeah the two things here aren't mutually exclusive. I'm having a blast with the XSX version in quality mode and have had relatively few and mostly minor bugs/issues so far. I also think CDPR is pretty scummy from both releasing it in such a bad state on last gen (especially base consoles) after not sending out review copies, limiting what footage people could share etc.

I don't have any cognitive dissonance from those two things. I understand that corporations exist to make big profits for their owners, investors and executives and are going to do things that I find scummy to maximize that. Thus I have no loyalty to any corporations and just begrudgingly give them money for products I enjoy and find fanboys/corporate loyalty/corporate apologists pathetic. I'm still going to enjoy the games, movies and whatever products I begrudgingly give them money for as I have hobbies and enjoying them is one of the main positives in life.

 

[Virt McPolygon]

This explains all the glitches and bugs then... in house QA testing?! lol

For a game of this scale, they definitely needed at least two third parties in addition to skilled in-house testers to cover everything.

 

[Nickolaidas]

I can understand your take. But then I would actually love to see Bethesda paying people to give that feedback and not the other way around or at least give those people the game for free, then. The problem I have with early access is the customer paying for it when they're essentially being used as an additional QA department.

Think of it this way:

You pay 50-60 bucks to buy the game, and you get to beta-test it as well.

 

[mortal]

This meme has absolutely zero basis in reality lol

There have been countless badly optimized console ports since like forever. It's not a one way street.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Think of it this way:

You pay 50-60 bucks to buy the game, and you get to beta-test it as well.

That's what being always connected does to people's lives.

Most gamers are hooked up digitally. Basically like an extension of employees. If they have changes, companies can send all the patches made 2 months later and it only cost them 2 cents of servers and bandwidth expense.

Seems worth it to me.

Better than releasing bad game and sending people patches via costly snail mail packages on a floppy disc like in 1994. And going by CDR, it'd be 5 mailings.

 

[MeatSafeMurderer]

Still the best studio in the industry. I'll be there day 1 for whatever they do next.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a masterpiece on PC and the first real peek at what next-gen gaming can do.

 

[Edgelord79]

Not much to glean from the recording.

Investors concerned at recouping costs. Management smoothing things over with platitudes and promises.

Guy with the PS4 was funny. Basically can't play the game from the studio he invested in.

 

[liminalcadet]

Interesting comments, and I definitely agree their reputation has taken a hit. I know I won't line up for their next game... Honestly, I didn't really enjoy TW3, but cyberpunk was too important a franchise to miss for me.

 

[replicant-]

Fuck investors. They are garbage level people.

Err, I have investments as does my 70-year-old mother. Neither of us are garbage level people.

It is called investing money to help secure personal financial security. Try it some time.

 

[ColonialRaptor]

Looking at how successful companies like amd are when they put an engineer in the position of ceo I don’t understand why this isn’t becoming a trend of putting devs or engineers in the ceo spot it’s the clear best business practice in the tech industry...

 

[iconmaster]

Hoeg has a good takedown of CDPR's statements in this call.

 

[ViolentP]

Fuck investors. They are garbage level people.

Other thsn that nornal problems like every other company.

Idiots in managment vs. Developers

I own stock in CDPR. Fuck you too, bro.

 

[BLAUcopter]

Fuck investors. They are garbage level people.

Other thsn that nornal problems like every other company.

Idiots in managment vs. Developers

Without investors, some of you favorite games, movies, products wouldn't even exist.

 

[THEAP99]

That's what being always connected does to people's lives.

Most gamers are hooked up digitally. Basically like an extension of employees. If they have changes, companies can send all the patches made 2 months later and it only cost them 2 cents of servers and bandwidth expense.

Seems worth it to me.

Better than releasing bad game and sending people patches via costly snail mail packages on a floppy disc like in 1994. And going by CDR, it'd be 5 mailings.

Disagree. There are plenty of people who don't have internet or have bad internet. Cd Projekt red are setting a bad precedent for those people. Nowhere on the game cover does it say online or patches required.

Imo they need to send out a new gold master with all the patches put on the disc if they want respect back from single player gamers across the world.

 

[THEAP99]

Fuck investors. They are garbage level people.

Other thsn that nornal problems like every other company.

Idiots in managment vs. Developers

Honestly did it ever occur to you that just MAYBE the cd Projekt red developers themselves are lacking in talent and it's not the fault of everyone except for them? Everyone involved in the game, from the source code engine makers, to the producers & managers are considered developers of the game.

 

[Northeastmonk]

I can’t recall a moment where I listened to parts of an investors meeting with the company’s CEO on opposite side of the call. I don’t think a lot of consumers know what to even do with this knowledge.

I miss post-Witcher 3 CDPR or even pre-Cyberpunk 2077

 

[BlackM1st]

"Transcript of the conference call through the butthurted lastgen owner eyes".

I'm perfectly fine with Cyberpunk pushing the boundaries and leaving current gen behind. CDPR is a Eastern European PC first company and it shows.

As for the current gen buyers... ask for refunds ppl, don't expect any miracles.
Don't waste your time and money.

Instead of waiting for the Cyberpunk fixes I would suggest to buy some console exclusives that looks and plays x100 times better.

 

[Enjay]

I guess it's safe to say that their crunch schedule that they had grandstanded about not needing to do came about due to gross incompetence.

 

[gamechanger87]

I can’t recall a moment where I listened to parts of an investors meeting with the company’s CEO on opposite side of the call. I don’t think a lot of consumers know what to even do with this knowledge.

I miss post-Witcher 3 CDPR or even pre-Cyberpunk 2077

Its not an investors meeting per se. It's an equity research analysts call. Typically right after earnings or major announcements. Likely setup because the analysts clamored and CDPR wanted to control the messaging before the research reports hit.

 

[vkbest]

“ 17 minutes in, as one of the developers is finishing up answering a question about what they will do to fix the game on last gen consoles, he tells the investor to not expect any graphical or game system type changes, as their only intent is to make the game playable from start to finish without crashing on last gen.”

Maybe I’m misinterpreting this, but looks to me, they will not fix the framerate problem, only focus on crashes

 

[DeeDogg_]

There’s no way the whole entire AI system will be fixed in a patch. Fuck that bullshit it’s not happening

 

[wordslaughter]

There’s no way the whole entire AI system will be fixed in a patch. Fuck that bullshit it’s not happening

They can literally change anything with a patch.

 

[Moogle11]

“ 17 minutes in, as one of the developers is finishing up answering a question about what they will do to fix the game on last gen consoles, he tells the investor to not expect any graphical or game system type changes, as their only intent is to make the game playable from start to finish without crashing on last gen.”

Maybe I’m misinterpreting this, but looks to me, they will not fix the framerate problem, only focus on crashes

I think you're reading it correctly. That said, fixing other issues may help with some of the worst frame drops. From videos of crashes I've seen, it's seems common to see the frame rate start really tanking before the game crashes. So if they can fix whatever is overtaxing the engine and causing the crashes, that will probably help performance in those bits. But I'd say there's no chance of the game getting work just to get closer to as table 30 FPS on last gen consoles.

The longterm fix there is those folks eventually getting next gen consoles and then they can play the game there with better performance and get the free upgrade to the next gen version when it's available. It doesn't make sense to put more effort into the least gen versions beyond getting them playable to completion without crashing as gamers will eventually all move on to next gen consoles or new PCs, and the few that don't will quit gaming/be retro only gamers and be irrelevant to publishers trying to sell new games anyway.

 

[MR ARCADE FOREVER]

Will Soysetera be against crunch to work on Cyberpunk's fix patches??

 

[pratyush]

No mention of timeline for Next gen upgrade.

Post bug fix, next gen upgrade and multiplayer, this game will sell for years just like Witcher 3.

I know a lot of people have issues with release and I myself have been quite critical but CDPR make games that I really want to play and it will be a shame if they stop.

 

[GrayChild]

The same can be said about any series you enjoyed, y'know.

Doesn't change the fact I'm having a blast with the game on PC, with almost no glitches or bugs.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Disagree. There are plenty of people who don't have internet or have bad internet. Cd Projekt red are setting a bad precedent for those people. Nowhere on the game cover does it say online or patches required.

Imo they need to send out a new gold master with all the patches put on the disc if they want respect back from single player gamers across the world.

We actually agree (I think).

I was thinking the CD business side of it and taking advantage of people doing patch downloads, and not giving a shit releasing unfinished games.

And some bean counters and marketing people there will green light patches. Bit in modern day, there is no way any company is going to send people new discs with patches pre-installed on it.

2 cents of corporate bandwidth or $5 to send a new disc in a bubble envelope. They don't care about long term or the SP guy who only goes off a disc. It's the 2 cent method that wins.

 

[MeatSafeMurderer]

The same can be said about any series you enjoyed, y'know.

Doesn't change the fact I'm having a blast with the game on PC, with almost no glitches or bugs.

Difference is almost any series I enjoyed isn't universally panned by all but fanboys as an abject travesty that needed atleast another 6 months in the oven.

 

[ChoosableOne]

CDPR couldn't predict the investor who has a "7 years old peasant hardware". I hope he gets a refund.

 

[GrayChild]

Difference is almost any series I enjoyed isn't universally panned by all but fanboys as an abject travesty that needed atleast another 6 months in the oven.

80% positive reviews on Steam in universal panning now?

Almost as if people are enjoying the game when playing it on adequate hardware.

 

[dEvAnGeL]

They can literally change anything with a patch.

They can, but the patch size would be big.

 

[MeatSafeMurderer]

80% positive reviews on Steam in universal panning now?

Almost as if people are enjoying the game when playing it on adequate hardware.

Have you actually read them? Most of them mention the poor state, they just recommend it on the game behind the bugs. It's better on PC, no doubt, but it's nowhere near perfect and it doesn't make the fact that CDP intentionally mislead customers about the state of the console versions okay.

 

[THEAP99]

Great read:

CD Projekt Red had nearly a decade to architect the great Cyberpunk 2077 mythos. Game reviewers had just a couple of days to assess it, and were hamstrung in how they could portray it. Gamers who had dropped $60 on this cyberpunk pleasure palace back in 2019 reeled; all the hot air came whizzing out. One professional reviewer, Kallie Plagge, gave Cyberpunk 2077 a 7/10 on GameSpot—not even a pan—criticizing it for one-dimensional world building, disconnected side quests, and large-scale technical issues. Mass harassment attended the review. Reactionary YouTubers, who did not have access to the game, dedicated long videos to dismantling her critique, dissecting her playtime and playstyle. But just days later,once gamers had finally played Cyberpunk 2077 themselves, many did a 180. “Everyone talked shit about her, but I’m starting to agree with Kelly [sp] Plagge,” read one popular post on /r/cyberpunkgame.

How Cyberpunk 2077 Sold a Promise—and Rigged the System

Video game companies are increasingly putting restrictions on what reviewers can show, widening the gap between expectations and reality.

www.wired.com

 

[AgentP]

Fuck investors. They are garbage level people.

It's their money and without them you have no company or game.

 

[Aeson]

80% positive reviews on Steam in universal panning now?

Almost as if people are enjoying the game when playing it on adequate hardware.

Even if this game had zero bugs and performance issues, it's still quite mediocre gameplay wise. RPG elements, the AI, the menus, gun selection and driving all have very serious issues. This list is not exhaustive either. I would say the only thing the game really has going for it is the story.

 

[TeamGizzyy]

what's happening here es clear as day. CDPR launched the game in this awful on purpose state because they wanted everyone to talk about the game and how bad it performs but nobody is talking about the blatant transphobia racism and bigotry the game offers. which is basically an alt right training camp.
- Polygon
/s

Finally!!Someone says it.

 

[ArtHands]

so... CDPR just confiremd that they do not have any deal with Sony or MS regarding refunds. What a bunch of fucks. And I was huge fan of them since Witcher 1...

they shouldn’t have to make special refund arrangement for the refund in the first place. Steam and GOG issue automated refund for numerous games on a daily basis, so no reason this shouldn’t be the case here.

 

[Hinedorf]

I feel like even on a great rig I've run into enough game-restarting bugs I've stopped playing altogether. Feel like before all things are said and done there's going to be several more game-breaking bugs found later in the campaign....rather just wait until the game has been beta tested by all the suckers (myself included) who saw all the red flags the moment it got delayed.

And now we're getting sold corporate bullshit from a company we all thought was really great, nope.

 

[sainraja]

Investors have one goal that is to make money. Like what do you expect that they are passionate gamers? rofl.

And what do they need to OR should care about in order to ensure that they will make that money?

 

[sainraja]

they shouldn’t have to make special refund arrangement for the refund in the first place. Steam and GOG issue automated refund for numerous games on a daily basis, so no reason this shouldn’t be the case here.

Likely because they have no influence over Sony/Microsoft. It was presented as if they did, at-least when they announced the refunds via twitter. Reality was obviously different.

 

[SF Kosmo]

The call is interesting to hear, but if you're looking for answers there are none to be found here.

Did they launch early it because they were pressured by investors? No.

Were there partnership deals that prevented them from delaying the console versions? No.

Was this a move made for financial reasons? Clearly not, the costs have been devastating.

Did they need more resources for testing or porting? No.

100% of it was just upper management d didn'twant to delay the game and while they were aware the console versions wouldn't flatter the game, they fooled themselves into thinking it was good enough despite many alarm bells.

Dumb and pointless, and, as they point out in the call, completely against their own business philosophy.

 

[Pantz]

Stay safe everyone, during the current Cyberpunk situation.

 

[Raven117]

The call is interesting to hear, but if you're looking for answers there are none to be found here.

Did they launch early it because they were pressured by investors? No.

Were there partnership deals that prevented them from delaying the console versions? No.

Was this a move made for financial reasons? Clearly not, the costs have been devastating.

Did they need more resources for testing or porting? No.

100% of it was just upper management d didn'twant to delay the game and while they were aware the console versions wouldn't flatter the game, they fooled themselves into thinking it was good enough despite many alarm bells.

Dumb and pointless, and, as they point out in the call, completely against their own business philosophy.

In layman’s terms, it’s called a fuck up.