Cyberpunk 2077 Sales Top a Staggering 25 Million as Phantom Liberty Hits 3 Million in a Week

Stole this from Twitter.

"CD Projekt Red has announced that a live-action Cyberpunk 2077 project is in early development from the production company behind True Detective and Mr. Robot."

I'm down.

At this point in time it's a really great game. Essential if you're interested in a fps action RPG with a very decent narrative. CDPR finally got there.

When the game first released and everyone was talking/memeing on it for how janky and unpolished it was, I watched streams of it and waved my hand at it.

After Edgerunners released I had an itch to play the game but didn't because of how rough around the edges it was.

But now with the overhaul and new Expansion, I really want to finally dive into the game and give it a shot. Still love Witcher 3 so I do have a soft spot for CDPR.

I hate it. I hate the message that this sends. Release crap, wait a bit, everyone forgives you, make enough money to swim around in like Scrooge Mcduck.
Just remember this every other time a developer releases unfinished garbage: it is just as much your fault for enabling them as it is theirs for doing it.

@LifeGirl I get your point but this was a bit more effort than "wait a bit, everyone forgives you". The dev team has literally spent two and a half years overhauling the game. And it's not like the company got off lightly — its reputation was undeniably damaged and it must have spent a ridiculous amount of money on rebuilding bridges.

I'm not saying Cyberpunk's launch should be forgiven — no company should ever be shipping a borderline broken product and asking people to pay for it — but ignoring the work that's been done since provides a very skewed perspective on the situation.

@LifeGirl EXACTLY. To hear outlets and so many frame this as some sort of redemption arc or outright engage in some sort of revisionist history is just so self-defeating for gamers and the industry as a whole.

Imagine if this game had not been called out for the fraud it was and the plan was allowed to go on as intended. Do not forget, influencers and largely the entirety of the games media space tried to pass this game off as amazing at release until the pushback on that narrative got so large and the truth undeniable. We have already seen post cyberpunk that the lesson was not learned primarily due to two factors. One, the shallow redemption arc narrative, as well as the fact that the fraud worked and 20 million of those sales occurred when this game was at its worst. This messaging and the ongoing push to now praise CDPR have basically laid out a red carpet for games to release unfinished and unpolished and charge gamers to be QA testers and allow dev teams to rake in initial sales, alongside moving the majority of the team onto other projects while a small team is set aside to finish the game over time.

All of that aside the truth is, Cyberpunk 2077 didn't just release technically unpolished. It was and still is an unfinished game. It took them over 2.75 years to iron out the technical problems and attempt a fix at the nonexistent police response system. Aside from that the core game is still unfinished and a patched together result of a mismanaged, troubled and oppressive development cycle. We should not be applauding massive sales of such an occurrence, it only serves to bring more cyberpunk releases to come, as the years following have shown.

Well deserved. The game has been redeemed and is now, in my opinion, one of the best games ever made. It is easily one of the best action RPGs available right now.

@ShogunRok I think an important fact to keep in mind is that a heavy amount of those sales were made for a largely discounted product. While 25 million is a staggering statistic, regardless, I'm willing to bet that at least half of those sales, if not two-thirds, were made at $30. I, personally, pre-ordered at full price, but after the disastrous launch, I shelved my copy until the PS5 version was released the following year and when it did, they were selling it half off.

I played the game upon release on the Series X, but encountered a bug that meant that I was not able to pursue all the Bounties because the game did not recognise that I had finished one, and so would not give me the next in line. Consequently I shelved the game after having played for around 120 hours (I like to do everything, so despite having done so many hours, much of the game was still left to do). I decided at that time that I would wait for the inevitable expansion (which at the time had not been announced) and for the game to effectively be fixed.

Whilst the game was in much better shape on the Xbox, I was hugely disappointed to have to make the decision to stop playing as the game was something that I truly wanted to play.

I watched with sheer disappointment what happened on the PlayStation, but hoped that the backlash that the game, and more importantly, CPDR received would serve as a timely reminder to Developers to not make the same mistake again. Whilst I guess that hope is in reality somewhat forlorn, I do think that when CPDR release their next game, they will not make the same mistake again. It may well have been pressure from their investors that had them push 2077 out of the starting blocks too early, but those same investors made less on their investment than they otherwise would have as consequence of having released it too early, and they must surely know that now. Therefore, I highly doubt that the next Witcher game will suffer the same fate, and I for one, will have no qualms in pre-ordering it...

all thanks to the power of Idris Elba, word up son

@wildcat_kickz That's a good point. We'll likely never know, but it'd be very interesting to see the actual profit for Cyberpunk 2077.

Good for them! It's been a heck of a rollercoaster ride for this game but it came out the otherside stronger than ever. Phantom Liberty is excellent. Update 2.0 has completely rejuvenated the game. Edgerunners is such an amazing anime.

CDPR made a mistake with the launch. But you know what? People make mistakes. I know it's a shocking revelation. It's time to move on from being upset about the launch I'd say. I'm not saying you should automatically trust their next release will be polished to an acceptable state but it can't be denied how much better the game is today.

CDPR did turn around the CP2077 ship.,...

Oh, so the game is finally good now 3 years after I bought it? Very cool 👍

Thank you CDPR

@ShogunRok @LifeGirl and do not that only the console version was "crap". Played the game on PC when it came out and it was pretty great. Granted it is even better now with 2.0

I've been playing the game and I have to agree with one of the other commentors here that this is now one of the best games ever made. Considering that it was unplayable at release, I would say that it's fair to call this a comeback or redemption story!

I borrowed my brothers copy after it released and played it on my ps5. It was quite good fun and i played it for around 5 hours or there abouts. I bought a almost brand new copy of ebay for £10 and waited for the announced free ps5 upgrade to drop to start playing it. Massive improvement. But then the next huge overhaul and expansion was announced so i put off playing it again but i'm going to restart the game from scratch. Easily the best £10 i've ever spent and i bet that thanks to that launch debacle there are plenty of other people who bought silly cheap almost new copys too. Forgive the broken launch? No but we can all move on and accept that releasing the game in that state was a bad move but also give some credit for the stellar work they put in to try and right the wrong. I wish more companys would put in this kind of effort.

@LifeGirl Gamers really need to get out more. Redemption is a concept older then any of us and ultimately gaming is just a luxury we use to pass time and not at all important enough for us to hold grudges over. CDPR done more then enough for Cyberpunk over the past 2 and a bit years, its a fantastic game now and quite frankly i don't care anymore about its launch years ago because i'm enjoying it too much now to care.

@KundaliniRising333 Core game unfinished? I mean yeah it is but i guess you would have to play it to know that.

I wonder if they will release more DLC after this. Gonna be a long while for Cyberpunk 2

@DennisReynolds It's about the implication you see.

It's definitely not staggering. If you consider how The Witcher 3 sold and how the pre-orders for Cyberpunk went, the game would easily be over 30 million copies sold by now.
The atrocious launch and the reputation attached to it held the sales back and this game will probably never reach The Witcher 3 in total sales.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a success, but a smaller one than most predicted.

@Deadlyblack Sorry what it wasn't jank it was criminal what they put out first they should have released a product like this in the last gen.

CDPR should absolutely be commended for sticking with this game. Mistakes were undoubtedly made and have been extensively recorded, reported and documented. They could have taken the money and ran. They could have cut their losses and moved on. They could have bled Mike Pondsmith’s baby dry and tossed it aside for a couple of bucks. But they didn’t. Instead they offered refunds on an admittedly sub-par product. They completed the mammoth and costly undertaking of restoring trust with with their customer base by reworking, rebuilding, scrapping and/or adding entire systems, all while choking on a heaping helping of crow. They restored Mike Pondsmith’s legacy among the halls of history. None of this was the easy way, so I do unabashedly applaud CDPR’s efforts. Especially the developers, who have shouldered the brunt of it all. There are those of us who appreciate your efforts. Thank you.

Kinda gross if you ask me. In a world where jumping hamburgers make it onto the ps store this game was taken off. PlayStation wouldn't let them sell it! That's... crazy. But that's how bad it was. And so 3 years later after pressure from Sony, and the media, and players, and probably shareholders they made it good... wow. Slow clap.

@zupertramp Sony pulling Cyberpunk from its store because of its quality is, in my opinion, highly debatable. Curiously, Sony was more than happy to sell it until CDPR began offering refunds, opening a can of worms that Sony decidedly didn’t want opened.

It’s great they fixed many of the issues after that train wreck launch, but I don’t think this game deserves those sorts of sale numbers.
But then again what would I know - dude-bro trash like GTA sells bazillions of units.

It is a damn good game right now! Weekend is coming and im in night city all night long!

@Jimmer-jammer fair point. But the situation was still unprecedented. And whatever the reason it left the store, this surely provided some not too noble motivation at CDPR. And cleaning up their mess, in my eyes the bare minimum, just isn't deserving of praise imo.

The true test will be their next launch. If it goes well then okay maybe we can put the whole ugly cyberpunk launch behind us.

Oh the journos sucking up to CDPR are truly pathetic.

@zupertramp Fair enough! Your last point is one we can both agree on. Their next launch is absolutely critical.

I bought it recently on sale. I was just hoping that it'd be the fantastic revolutionary title that they'd portrayed it as just prior to its launch.

It isn't. The AI is dated, the level design is bland, and I'm still encountering bugs that I noticed when I first played it on PC about a year ago. Three notable bugs in less than an hour.

I managed to get through about ten hours. After that, I just quit out. I don't think I'll be returning to it. Maybe I will but it's doubtful. I just hope this doesn't portend a poor Witcher 4 release. I'm desperately looking forward to it but I'm just not sure that I should be.

I was lucky and baffled when the game first came out. I played it though on Xbox X end to end completing every mission and experienced very few of the problems people were screaming about. There were some visual glitches for me but no showstoppers or even quest stoppers. Yet the world was going nuts. My friends played on PC and they too had a good time too, but the sheer volume of people posting and you tubing made the evidence clear. Then it became a news juggernaut and PlayStation pulled it and so it goes. I played through again on Xbox series X and am still shrugging and scratching my head. I watched endless You Tubes and the glitches shown are sometimes hilarious and so just plain bad. It was undeniable there were issues, not all were showstoppers but enough to make people not to want to continue. It just wasn’t my experience and I wasn’t alone.

I still don’t know anyone who had the terrible experience that many clearly did (and I work in a company of gamers). Witcher 3 was mind blowing and Cyberpunk 2077 was equally a great experience for me. I have now finished the game for the 5th time after 2.0 and am just beginning the Phantom Liberty expansion.

The truth is there are people who never experienced the show stopping problems that many did. I find it baffling still. I am sorry if you were one who experienced the bad, but I do encourage you to revisit and experience this remarkable game now.

Have fun!

Are we all playing the same game here? 2.0 and 2.01 each brought their own sets of bugs and other issues. Yes the game is playable now but it's still far from great. The police AI might as well not be there, the vehicle combat is diabolical, there's very little in the form of in game weather and other in game ambiance. And all this talk of sales figures at a time when cdpr staff are unionising in the wake of yet more layoffs. Cdpr should absolutely not be commended for their actions and or efforts. They needed a smash hit dlc in order to make this game viable, and fortunately they appear to have pulled it off, thanks in no small part to securing Idris Elba. But let's not forget that the dlc itself came with a review embargo that meant reviewers could only show cdpr stock footage if they wanted to talk about the dlc pre-release and we're strictly forbidden from saying anything negative about it. I don't care who you are, this kind of attitude towards reviewers and the gaming public cannot and should not be tolerated.