A CD Projekt Red investor and attorney has begun a class action lawsuit against a developer due to the state of Cyberpunk 2077, and how it was advertised.
As previously reported, CD Projekt Red 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.
A report by The New York Times report on the game’s troubled development and launch. They report Sony’s customer service was overwhelmed, and “briefly took down one of its corporate sites.” They also cite former employees claiming that the games features the game initially touted were far from ready.
They also report that one of CD Projekt Red’s investors have begun a class-action lawsuit. Attorney and investor Mikołaj Orzechowski states (via Bankier [translation: Google Translate]) calls on others to contact him should they be under “a situation similar” to himself.
He claims that CD Projekt Red (at the alleged admittance of its management board in an investor call) did not act with due diligence in developing the game for PlayStation 4. The lawsuit will consider investor’s rights, the game’s delays, and how the game was promoted compared to the final product.
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 86, with a user score of 7.1 (out of 10). Meanwhile, the game’s PlayStation 4 and Xbox One user scores are 3.3 and 4.5 respectively (with Metascores of 55 and 54 respectively).
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.
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.”
Both Sony and Microsoft stated they would offer full refunds for the game. Sony would remove the game from the PlayStation Store, but there were “no talks” of Microsoft removing it from theirs.
A Reddit user also discovered a PC config file for the game was improperly programmed, and has provided a fix.
Cyberpunk 2077 is available on Windows PC (via Epic Games, GOG, and Steam), PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia. The game is also coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in 2021, and players on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One respectively will be able to upgrade to the next-gen for free.
In case you missed it, you can find our review here.
Image: Steam