Microsoft have announced they will be offering refunds for Cyberpunk 2077, while CD Projekt Red have stated there are no talks to remove the game from the Microsoft Store.
Sony Interactive Entertainment had previously announced they would remove Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store, and began offering refunds directly. The surprising move led to speculation on what Microsoft would do, and if they would do the same.
Xbox announced on Twitter that they would be accepting refunds for the game (via this webpage), while sympathizing with CD Projekt Red.
“Cyberpunk 2077: To ensure that every player can get the experience they expect on Xbox, we will be expanding our existing refund policy to offer full refunds to anyone who purchased Cyberpunk 2077 digitally from the Microsoft Store, until further notice.
While we know the developers at CD PROJEKT RED have worked hard to ship Cyberpunk 2077 in extremely challenging circumstances, we also realize that some players have been unhappy with the current experience on older consoles.
To date, we have granted refunds to the vast majority of customers who have requested one.”
In a statement to Reuters, president and CEO Adam Kiciński revealed that CD Projekt is not in talks to remove the game from the Microsoft Store. “We are not in such discussions with Microsoft at the moment.” While user reviews for the console version of the game are low, the Xbox One version is marginally better.
In addition, CD Projekt Red have stated on Twitter that if users cannot get refunds of physical or digital copies of the game from physical stores, they will help refund them “out of our own pocket if necessary.”
As previously reported, the game’s numerous delays and leaked footage were not the end of the woes for CD Projekt Red. One reviewer suffered a major epileptic seizure, and accused the developer on basing the Braindance headset off a medical device designed to intentionally induce seizures.
Despite high praise from initial reviews, the Metacritic user score was far less. Currently the Metascore for the PC version of the game is 87, with a user score of 7.1 (out of 10). Meanwhile, the game’s PlayStation 4 and Xbox One user scores are 3.1 and 4.3 respectively (with Metascores of 55 each).
It should be noted that those who have not played the game may also be submitting user reviews, as Metacritic does not verify if a user has completed or played a game. In February for example a user of Reset Era orchestrated the review bombing of AI: The Somnium Files.
Metacritic placed a 36 hour grace period on user reviews for video games in July of this year. Metacritic would later insist this decision was not motivated by reactions to any particular game. That year also say low user review scores for Warcraft III: Reforged, and The Last of Us Part II.
Users complained of Cyberpunk 2077‘s numerous glitches and bugs, along with poor optimization and the console version having inferior graphics. Even critic reviews that praised the game also discussed those issues. Since then a hotfix has been released, but CD Projekt Red stock value dropped by 29% in a week.
CD Projekt Red later apologized for not showing Cyberpunk 2077 running on last-gen consoles (though they did show the game running on PlayStation 4 Pro), and for the unstable launch of the game.
As such they offered refunds, though there have been some claims that PlayStation and Microsoft were not offering refunds in some cases, even after the announcement. At least one Reddit user had managed to get a refund for the game on PlayStation 4 prior to CD Projekt Red’s announcement, despite playing the game for over 10 hours.
A Q&A investor call reportedly had CD Projekt Red denying they had any special agreements for refunds for Cyberpunk 2077 on consoles, and that they were working on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the game “until the very last minute.” A Reddit user also discovered a PC config file for the game was improperly programmed, and has provided a fix.
Image: Previously released press release.
