CD Projekt Red Says Cyberpunk 2077's Launch Failure Made the Game Better

CD Projekt Red has a very different view of what happened in 2020. What started as one of the most hyped game launches in recent memory turned into a case study in how quickly things can go wrong. But now, the developer behind Cyberpunk 2077 says the failure may have been the best thing that could have happened to the game.

Speaking to The Mirror, CD Projekt Red’s senior VP of technology, Charles Tremblay, said that the huge backlash actually pushed the team to make Cyberpunk 2077 better than it ever would’ve been without it.

"At the end side, if you think about it, if the success of the game would have been what we originally expected, would it be the same game that we’re playing today? I don’t think so."

The launch was one of the worst in recent memory. Bugs, missing features, broken visuals on last-gen hardware, and a massive mismatch between what was promised and what was delivered. Cyberpunk 2077 launched in December 2020, but it took years of updates and one major DLC for the game to finally recover.

At the time, CDPR had a lot of goodwill from The Witcher 3, and expectations were sky-high. Keanu Reeves was the face of the marketing campaign. Night City looked dense and detailed. Previews promised open-ended quests and a responsive world. Instead, players got crashes, performance issues, and a game that felt rushed, especially on consoles.

It wasn’t just the players who felt the weight of that failure. CD Projekt Red developers faced pressure not just from the press, but in their personal lives. At the 2024 DICE Summit, game director Gabe Amatangelo shared a story about his landlord refusing to fix his showerhead after the release. When Amatangelo asked about it, the landlord replied with a line he’d heard before: “We’re working on it.”

It was a joke with bite. CDPR had been saying the same thing to players who were stuck with broken versions of the game.

The situation even led to a lawsuit. CD Projekt had to pay $1.85 million in settlement after accusations that it had misled investors about the game’s technical state. And while that kind of attention might have sunk another studio, CDPR doubled down. Patches came quickly, systems were overhauled, and eventually, the Phantom Liberty DLC launched in 2023, giving the game a massive shot of adrenaline.

The update patches didn’t just fix bugs. They added depth to gameplay systems and restored cut features. Car combat, improved police AI, and redesigned skill trees gave the game new life. The DLC also introduced Dogtown, a new district filled with dangerous factions and political power games, and sent the main character, V, on a mission to rescue the President of the New United States.

Public opinion started to shift. Cyberpunk 2077 went from being a meme about broken games to something closer to what had been promised. As of now, the game has a “Very Positive” rating on Steam with over 630,000 reviews. A full reversal from launch day, when Sony pulled the game from the PlayStation Store.

That redemption arc seems to have inspired CDPR’s next steps. Development on Cyberpunk 2077 is officially finished. The team has moved on to other projects, including the game’s sequel, codenamed Project Orion. It’s still early, but the project is real, and CDPR says the lessons from 2077 are already shaping the way it’s being built.

Not much is known about Project Orion, but it’s rumored to take place in a new location described as “Chicago gone wrong.” The studio is also continuing its partnership with Netflix, which made the Edgerunners anime that helped revive interest in the franchise in 2022.

There’s no exact timeline for the sequel, but CDPR has been clear that they’re taking a more careful, measured approach. The 2020 launch burned a lot of bridges. Rebuilding that trust wasn’t easy, but it worked. And they’re not going to repeat the same mistakes.

CDPR isn’t the same studio it was five years ago. Internally, it restructured, improved its QA pipeline, and rolled out new development practices. Phantom Liberty had fewer bugs, better performance, and stronger writing—something reviewers and players both noticed.

The company seems to recognize that the pain of the launch is part of the story now. But instead of running from it, they’re owning it. For them, that backlash forced them to engage with their own mistakes and fix them. It wasn’t a failure they could hide or patch quietly. It was public, and it stayed that way until the game matched the vision.

Cyberpunk 2077 may not have lived up to its promise in 2020, but by 2023 it had changed enough to win players back. That wouldn’t have happened if the launch had gone smoothly and CDPR had moved on. They were forced to stick with the game. And they say that’s why it’s better now.

The sequel will likely carry that pressure into its own cycle. Every new reveal, every system shown, every piece of dialogue—people will remember what happened before. But they’ll also remember how it turned out in the end. For CDPR, that ending matters just as much as the beginning.