CD Projekt RED‘s next game is not going to launch in November.

The Polish devs announced Cyberpunk 2077‘s third delay in a Twitter announcement: „Hey everyone, today, we’ve decided to move the release date of Cyberpunk 2077 by 21 days. The new release date is December 10. Most likely, there are many emotions and questions in your heads, so, first and foremost, please accept our humble apologies. The biggest challenge for us right now is shipping the game on current-gen, next-gen, and PC at the same time, which requires us to prepare and test nine versions of it (Xbox One / X, compatibility on Xbox Series S / X, PlayStation 4 / Pro, compatibility on PlayStation 5, PC, Stadia)… while working from home. Since Cyberpunk 2077 evolved towards almost being a next-gen title somewhere along the way, we need to make sure everything works well and every version runs smoothly. We’re aware it might seem unrealistic when someone says that 21 days can make any difference in such a massive and complex game, but they do.

Some of you might also be wondering what these words mean in light of us saying we achieved gold master some time ago. Passing certification, or “going gold,” means the game is ready, can be completed, and has all content in it. But it doesn’t mean we stop working on it and raising the quality bar. On the contrary, this is the time where many improvements are being made which will then be distributed via a Day 0 patch. This is the period we undercalculated. We feel we have an amazing game on our hands and are willing to make every decision, even the hardest ones, if it ultimately leads to you getting a video game you’ll fall in love with,” Adam Badowski and Marcin Iwinski wrote.

The fans didn’t take this delay so kindly, especially how the dev time keeps expanding with features being cut (we’ll get back to this subject later). This is why Andrzej Zawadski, a senior game designer, wrote on Twitter: „I want to address one thing in regards to the Cyberpunk 2077 delay. I understand you’re feeling angry, disappointed and want to voice your opinion about it. However, sending death threats to the developers is absolutely unacceptable and just wrong. We are people, just like you.” And some of them only learned about the delay from the Twitter announcement, which is somewhat weird. There’s a video about this below.

It’s still bold because several developers were working overtime (crunch), and yet, multiple features got cut from the game. Miles Tost, the senior level designer, talked in detail about this on CD Projekt RED’s forums: „We never had dual wielding and I have said my words on techie so often; not sure what else to say about it other than that if you are unsure, please wait for reviews, check whoever you trust after it launches and get their input. Not every game is for everyone, we don’t have the power to change that, haha. No one is forcing you to buy the game day one and no one at CDPR wants you to be disappointed with a game you might not enjoy.

Having said that, on the topic of cut features: cutting features and scope is a very normal part of development. You can witness it so openly with our game because we happily gave in to community wishes and showed you that 2018 demo. Think about it. The game – 2 years from release. Of course, we iterate and change stuff and of course, we also will have ideas that sound great on paper but then don’t end up working out well in the game with all the other features. [With The] Witcher 3 we also cut a ton of stuff, but in the end, all of it made the game better – now I understand, this is disappointing for everyone when it happens and also difficult to understand without all the context of the development environment, but in this case, I just kindly ask you for your trust. Just look at stories of so many other games you might enjoy.

Believe me when I say that during their development some loved features also were cut and you still enjoy them today, maybe even because of the cuts. In the end, it is all about how much fun the game and its systems provide you and we are doing our best to make sure it is as great of an experience as it can be. Sometimes for that, you have to make some hard decisions and this time around, you were here to witness it. If you worry about the amount of content on our game, please don’t. We’re notoriously bad at judging how long game time is in our games (I remember we estimated players would max out The Witcher 3 at 100h), so we try not to do that anymore. But I can only keep saying what I have been saying in the past: you guys have seen nothing yet. It’s less than a month now, soon all your questions will be answered (hopefully satisfyingly!) and I can’t wait for you all to play it finally. Been a long time coming,” he wrote.

Cyberpunk 2077 is launching on December 10 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series (the next-gen patch won’t arrive until 2021), PC (every store will offer it), PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia.

Source: Gematsu, Screenrant, WCCFTech

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