In the gaming industry, the most anticipated event of this year was the release of Cyberpunk 2077. I guess, the developer company was ready for many things – but for a swift decline of the quotations after the long-awaited release. Let’s figure out what went wrong and why.

What happened?

On December 10th, Cyberpunk 2077 was released. The game appeared on several platforms at once: PlayStation, Xbox, GOG, Epic Games Store, NVIDIA Gforce Now, Google Stadia, and Steam.

Regardless of the great agitation around the new product of the Polish game studio CD Projekt RED, even before the release, the stock price of the parent company CD Projekt went down.

On December 7th, in the Warsaw stock exchange Giełda Papierów Wartościowych w Warszawie, GPW, the stocks of the developer dropped by 4.04% to 425.1 PLN from 443 PLN.

On the next day, the decline continued, overcoming 7% and reaching 395 PLN. On the day of the release, the stocks dropped by 8.54% to 362 PLN. And the downtrend continued.

However, the most spectacular decline happened on December 18th after it was announced that Cyberpunk 2077 had been deleted from the Sony PlayStation Store. On that day, the stocks fell by 12.23%, reaching 271.4 PLN.

Even without the falling before the release, the stock price of the company has dropped by over 31% since December 10th, from 395.8 to 271.4 PLN.

What was the reason for the decline?

Such a failure was due to a whole load of bugs and poor optimization of the game. Those technical issues mostly harmed the users of Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles.

Users mostly complain of textures not uploading, the light being erratic, low image resolution of 720p, and a frame rate of 15 FPS – while the minimum comfortable rate is 30 FPS.

Critics and gamers could not ignore such low quality of the product and dropped the rating of Cyberpunk 2077:

  • Jeuxvideo.com – 3.5 out of 10;
  • Metacritics – 90/100;
  • PC user rating – 6.8/10;
  • PS4 – 2.8/10;
  • XboxOne – 3.7/10.

The situation becomes even more complicated because nothing is clear about the special version of this role-playing game for Xbox Series X/S and PS5. Low voices are promising a release in 2021 which only enhances the disappointment of investors.

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As a cherry on the top, Sony deleted the game from its Sony PlayStation Store due to the failed release.

Is it that bad?

Analysts agree that the situation in CD Projekt is hard but they note positive statistics as well. For example, the number of pre-orders amounted to 8 million, while the profit from selling the game reached 500 million USD. In the studio, they admit that thanks to the pre-orders, they’ve already covered the expenses of designing and promoting the product.

Moreover, the number of active gamers on the Steam platform impresses: right after the release, it reached 1 million people. Note that the platform pays 80% royalty to the developer.

Experts polled by Bloomberg say that the company will sell 17 million copies in the first fortnight and 29.7 million copies in the first year. Only 9 games on the globe can boast such statistics.

A large resource on the gaming industry GameIndustry.biz announces that Cyberpunk 2077 became number one in British charts and number two on the list of the largest releases of the year, right after FIFA 20 by Electronic Arts.

As for the bugs, the Polish studio has already released an update for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC with a huge number of changes and updates. Also, the developer promised a refund to all the displeased users, which is charming.

Summing up

The failed release of the multi-platform game Cynerounk 2077 dragged down the stocks of the developer CD Projekt by over 31%. Gamers complain of multiple bugs and lame optimization that harm the ratings of the product. All this made Sony remove the game from the Store for now.

However, experts note that the statistics of pre-orders and sales is formidable, and draw attention to the hotfix of the bugs. Analysts are sure that the long-awaited release will be among the largest ones and push the stock back to their former position.

Well, the game was definitely a blow on the company’s reputation but it is too early to bury CD Projekt and its stocks.

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