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CD Projekt vows "vigorous action" to fight Cyberpunk 2077 investor lawsuit

CD Projekt vows "vigorous action" to fight Cyberpunk 2077 investor lawsuit

Polish games firm CD Projekt has said it will "undertake vigorous action" to fight a class-action lawsuit from investors alleging the company misled them over Cyberpunk 2077's quality.

In a note on its investor relations page, CD Projekt acknowledged that a class-action lawsuit had been filed in the state of California by Rosen Law Firm, but said that it would fight the case.

This is just one of a number of legal disputes that are circulating the Polish games firm at the moment, with another seemingly being on the way from Warsaw-based attorney Mikołaj Orzechowski. Interestingly, their post announcing that they were building a class-action suit against CD Projekt has been removed from Banker.pl forum by a moderator.

This legal action comes in the wake of Cyberpunk 2077's December 10th release. The title has issues with bugs and glitches in general, but is seemingly unplayable on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Following launch, CD Projekt apologised for the game's quality, before Sony pulled the title from the PlayStation Store. In the wake of this extraordinary action, the studio's stock crashed down 15 per cent overnight.

It's not just investors that are angry at CD Projekt – staff are also seemingly furious at management, both for the way they have treated employees and the damage that they may have done to the studio's reputation. CD Projekt promised to finish Cyberpunk 2077 without "mandatory" crunch but enforced six-day workweeks in September, ahead of release. At the time, joint CEO Adam Kiciński told investors that crunch for the game was "not that bad," a remark that he walked back from the following day when he apologised to staff.

Cyberpunk 2077 was pre-ordered eight million times, raking in enough to cover both development and marketing costs. Between its release on December 10th and December 20th, CD Projekt reckons that the title has shifted 13 million copies.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.