5 Years Later, Cyberpunk 2077 Is A Changed Game, But Its Biggest Failures Still Haunt It
An incomplete comeback story.
It’s hard to imagine an anticipated game launch going worse than Cyberpunk 2077’s. Released on December 10, 2020, the followup to one of the most acclaimed RPGs ever arrived after years of hype in a barely finished state, full of bugs and missing features. While it was a joke at the time, the game was totally reworked in the years that followed, eventually approaching the groundbreaking game that it was originally promised as — but even that can’t fully cover up the messy road that got it there.
Cyberpunk 2077’s troubles started well before it was released. Announced in 2012, it would get a teaser trailer the next year, followed by several years of little to no word on the game from CD Projekt Red. In 2015, The Witcher 3 was released, and its success both gave CD Projekt Red some breathing room as players dived deep into the fantasy RPG and intensified the desire for its next project.
CD Projekt Red released an anniversary trailer to celebrate five years after Cyberpunk 2077’s release.
Finally, a release date was announced in 2019, setting its launch for April 2020, but throughout the year, the game was pushed back time and time again. People eager to get their hands on the game were irate, with some going so far as to harass and even threaten developers at CD Projekt Red.
Things only got worse when Cyberpunk 2077 was released. When it finally hit storefronts, the game was an unmitigated catastrophe. The internet was flooded with videos of glitches, bizarre NPC behavior, and seemingly half-finished content — all things that would feel off in an early access indie game, let alone a released title from a major developer. On consoles, performance was even worse, with textures failing to load and full crashes. Retailers went as far as to offer refunds even for opened or played games, and PlayStation removed it from sale entirely.
Years of updates have transformed Cyberpunk 2077 from a failure to a widely liked RPG.
Eventually, CD Projekt Red began to turn the game’s reputation around. Patch after patch was released to fix bugs, improve performance, and refine or add systems that either didn’t work or were entirely absent from the initial release. Bit by bit, Cyberpunk 2077 went from a joke to a respectable RPG, and players had more room to see the parts of the game that really shined. While it’s full of edgy humor that just doesn’t land, its story — especially in quests revolving around side characters — has plenty to like about it. And while Night City isn’t as fully realized as CD Projekt Red had promised, it’s still an impressive feat to see just how expansive it is. By the time the Phantom Liberty DLC was released in 2023, Cyberpunk 2077 felt like an entirely different game, and the biggest of its issues were behind it.
But it’s impossible to erase all of the problems surrounding Cyberpunk 2077’s launch. Ahead of release, the game’s marketing seemed to be openly courting the worst parts of the gaming audience. Multiple tweets from both the Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter (now X) account and that of CD Projekt-owned storefront GOG referenced anti-trans memes. Then, an in-game advertisement including a fetishized portrayal of a trans woman was used prominently in marketing the game. The artist behind the ad explained it as an attempt to depict transphobia in the game world, rather than promote it in the real one, and CD Projekt Red fired the community manager responsible for the offensive posts, the incidents stirred up a crowd of right-wing players, giving critics plenty of reason to be suspicious of Cyberpunk 2077 once it launched.
The best parts of Cyberpunk 2077 are its characters, but real-world stereotypes still mar the experience.
It didn’t help that once the game launched, players realized that, rather than being able to choose their character’s gender, the pronouns they were referred to by are based on which voice they chose — a problem that still hasn’t been addressed. And while the game’s intention may be satire, its characterization of Night City’s mostly racially segregated gangs veers into stereotyping itself without any comment that could excuse it as parody.
In a technical sense, Cyberpunk 2077 is a changed game, one that came to fulfill its promise years after release. For most players, it’s now an RPG worth investing time into, for all the flaws that remain. But it’s just as important to acknowledge the problems that haven’t or can’t be erased as to credit CD Projekt Red for reinventing the game so thoroughly. We can only hope that the mistakes that leave some players still feeling alienated won’t be repeated or written off so easily in the future.
