Gaming

'Cyberpunk 2077' devs are getting death threats due to delays

Disappointment is justified. Death threats are not.

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Yesterday, Input reported on CD Projekt Red's forthcoming game Cyberpunk 2077 being delayed once again. The release of the open-world, action-adventure game has been highly anticipated by fans for months now. Despite much of the world being in some form of lockdown, the U.S. being in the grips of an unhinged president, and the general madness of 2020 affecting everyone, some horrid people still thought it was okay to send the game's developers death threats because of the latest delay.

Earlier in 2020, the creators of what's nonetheless still one of 2020's most anticipated games announced what would turn out to be the title's first delay. It was originally scheduled for an April released, but that was then pushed to September, and then again to November. On Tuesday, the company took to Twitter to break the news that the game wouldn't release in mid-November (alongside new consoles from both Sony and Microsoft), but would only arrive in December because of the challenges of finalizing it for a huge variety of platforms. That's when the rage and threats started.

Keyboard warriors — According to senior game designer Andrzej Zawadzki, the developer team has received death threats for the delay of the title. "I want to address one thing in regards of the @CyberpunkGame delay," Zawadzki tweeted. "I understand you're feeling angry, disappointed and want to voice your opinion about it. However, sending death threats to the developers is absolutely unacceptable and just wrong. We are people, just like you."

The background — Much of the fan outrage comes from people who believe that they had been lied to about the release date. This stems from an announcement by the team in October where they promised there would be no further delays... only to break that promise. We'd argue all bets are off this year and threatening the lives of strangers who no doubt will now be working back-to-back late nights until almost Christmas isn't the way to go, but we're conservative like that.

A team member from CD Projekt Red, Fabian Mario Dohla, cleared this up this quickly right below Zawadzki's tweet. "[I] would love to clarify this," Dohla said. "I was responding via @CyberpunkGame to a bunch of tweets last night. Including the 'full confirmation'. Great idea. Thing is: we are a public traded company and it’s almost impossible to tell every employee beforehand. Mainly legal reasons."

Dohla added that, 'CP Twitter (and therefore our studio — as it’s an official channel) did not lie on purpose. I simply didn’t know. Apologies."

If you're a Cyberpunk 2077 fan, consider making a PC for the game while you wait or, you know, play something else to distract yourself. December will be here soon enough. And at least it gives you something to look forward to.