Polish games firm CD Projekt could be facing legal action from its investors over the launch of Cyberpunk 2077.
As reported by The New York Times – and spotted by VGC – Warsaw-based attorney Mikołaj Orzechowski is building a class-action lawsuit against the studio, specifically over alleged "misrepresentation in order to obtain financial benefits," as translated by Google.
In other words, the attorney – who is also a CD Projekt investor – is claiming that the company lied about Cyberpunk 2077 in order to gain investor confidence.
This follows the game's launch on December 10th, following which it emerged that the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game were well below the quality people expected from them. Cyberpunk 2077 was pulled from PlayStation Store at the end of last week, with CD Projekt's stock price opening 15 per cent lower than it closed the night before. Earlier in the year, the company was worth $8.13bn and has lost around $1bn in valuation since.
Bloomberg has also reported that staff are furious at management for both the way they have been treated and the damage Cyberpunk 2077's botched launch has done to the company's reputation.
Ahead of release, journalists warned that the game could trigger epileptic seizures, too. CD Projekt has added a warning to the game in addition to tweaking the parts of the game that might cause this reaction.
That's without discussing the reports that emerged about working conditions on the project. Though CD Projekt promised it would finish Cyberpunk 2077 without "mandatory" crunch, the studio... mandated six-day workweeks in September. Speaking to investors, joint CEO Adam Kiciński said that crunch was "not that bad" on the project, a remark that he apologised to staff for the following day.
The game's December 10th release came after three delays. Ahead of launch, Cyberpunk 2077 was pre-ordered eight million times, bringing in around $500 million in revenue – enough to cover both development and marketing costs. The title also attracted one million concurrent users on Steam within hours of launch.
