The CEO of the Polish company has openly admitted that he thinks the underrated release of the first-person adventure Night City has tarnished the public’s perception of them too much.

CD Projekt had a good track record with The Witcher trilogy, even though it wasn’t their IP, and therefore it seemed impossible for them to do anything wrong… which they did, despite repeated delays, with Cyberpunk 2077 (which Sony took the unprecedented step of removing from the PlayStation Store until the developers fixed it by June 2021). In the six months since its release, the game has finally improved, but the biggest changes came with the 2.0 update and the Phantom Liberty add-on, which didn’t reach us until much later (and the Kieg has already skipped the PlayStation 4/Xbox One pair).

Eurogamer published a review of the game in which CD Projekt co-CEO Michał Nowakowski admitted that while the game’s status had been restored, the studio’s reputation had not: “At the level of the board, it was: a) the realization of what happened, b) we acknowledged ourselves that what happened was a big, big challenge and a big hit for the company. None of us really thought about it in financial terms, but it’s a problem for the future that we hoped to build for this company, for its perception with the fans. And that’s something that, to be honest, we’ve probably lost forever. And yeah, you can fix some things, but it’s a certain perception of the company that will never come back. Is that good or bad? I don’t know, but it’s a fact.”

Paweł Sasko, the assistant director of the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 (Orion, made at CD Projekt’s Boston studio), was similarly cautious: “I accept and understand that for some of them it might be a situation that never happens. But unfortunately, that’s the price we have to pay for what happened. But I hope that through the work that we’re doing, through the things that we’re showing, that we can actually win some of those people over – and when they hear someone talk to them about the incredible experiences that they can have in, let’s say, Phantom Liberty, or the next Witcher, or the next Cyberpunk, or Hadar [CD Projekt’s new IP], the moment they see that there’s this incredible value in that game, they will actually reach out and play it and enjoy it.”

Your situation is understandable. Their situation is understandable. Their expectations are not going to be as high now as they were with Cyberpunk 2077. So maybe they won’t be as disappointed…

Source: WCCFTech