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CD Projekt studio boss refutes reporting about Cyberpunk 2077 development

CD Projekt studio boss refutes reporting about Cyberpunk 2077 development

CD Projekt RED studio head Adam Badowski has disputed some of the claims made in a recent report about Cyberpunk 2077's development.

In a post on Twitter, the exec refuted some aspects of Bloomberg's exposé, including the fact that the E3 2018 demo was "almost entirely fake."

To be fair to Badowski, it's not uncommon for demos shown at trade shows to be more akin to vertical slices than actual sections of the game – though there have been so many examples of developers overpromising with these showcases at this point in time you have to wonder why companies still try to pull this off. 

It's worth noting that CD Projekt refused to comment on Bloomberg's story.

"It's hard for a trade show game demo not to be a test of vision or vertical slice two years before the game ships, but that doesn't mean it's fake," he wrote.

"Games are not made in a linear fashion and start looking like the final product only a few months before launch. If you look at that demo now, it's different yes, but that's what the 'work in progress' watermark is for. Our final game looks and plays way better than what that demo ever was."

Badowski also questions whether Cyberpunk 2077's launch was entirely disastrous, saying that the title was met with critical acclaim on PC - though that version of the release is still pretty buggy and glitchy.

"As for the old-gen consoles, yes that is another case," he said.

"But we've owned up to that and are working super hard to eliminate bugs (on PC, too -- we know that's not a perfect version either) and we are proud of Cyberpunk 2077 as a game and artistic vision."

Cyberpunk 2077 launched on December 10th. The title was pre-ordered some eight million times and sold 13 million units in total in its first ten days in the wild.

The game came under fire for quality issues, with Sony pulling the PS4 version of the title from the PlayStation Store.


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.